On November 21st, the Junior High Book Club, supervised by math teacher Colleen Cook and special education/language arts teacher Alessandra Baric, came back to school at 7 pm to see the movie based on James Dashner’s 2009 book The Maze Runner.

This book symbolizes the very first selection of the monthly Book Club.  This is the first full year of the Junior High Book Club, with a strict book read per month.  Each book is decided upon by a voting system in Google Classroom, but The Maze Runner, being the first book, was not chosen by students.  This book was a very famous novel in its heyday, with over 20 million copies sold. 

The movie, which came out in 2014, features Dylan O’Brien as the main character Thomas, with Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Aml Ameen, and Kaya Scodelario as some of his comrades. 

Seventh grader Ava Samuels offered her take on the book, movie, and movie night itself, “…I ended up getting there at 6:55 but I went to Robotics for a little bit before then.  My favorite part of the movie night was probably just hanging out with everyone.”

When asked what she would rate the book out of five stars, she responded, “Three.  Because it was a little boring and moved a little too slow.” 

She also stated that the scene with the characters discovering the vital “Griever Hole” which eventually leads to their escape from “The Maze” was missing from the movie.

The book, from the time of many great series, was ranked surprisingly low by many members of the Book Club.  This first book was not selected by the students, as they had not had a meeting prior to the discussion, and was instead selected for its high ratings – as an example being a solid 4.0 stars on Goodreads.

Ms. Cook, who arranged and attended the movie night along with the Book Club meetings themselves, stated, “We decided to make sure the first book we chose for the year had a movie adaption…the writing felt a little immature and it took me a very long time to be interested in the plot.  I’d say the final third of the book was good.”

According to Cook, this is the first full year the club has been in session.  She has never done a movie night like this before but enjoyed it thoroughly.  She liked being able to wear comfortable clothes and relax as well.

This was an exciting experience and hopefully not the last we will be hearing from the Book Club!