The third book for children and young adults, especially those who feel “weird”, penned by the respected and popular prose writer.

Children’s and Young Adult  |  English sample translation available

The Weird Kids Club includes ten-year-old Mila, who has a thing about insects and spiders; Petr, who is a little younger and hasn’t grown much but is great at drawing and can’t sleep at night because he’s afraid of the dark; Katka, who’s a bit chubby and takes refuge in books to escape her loneliness. And then there’s Franta, who walks using crutches and is often mean. In their own way, each of them is wrestling with being different from the majority. What keeps these “weird” kids from going under – excluded children who are completely normal but don’t have it easy in the world of the perfect? Perhaps an unexpected friendship? Petra Soukupová has a deep understanding of children and is able to write stories for them that adult readers find riveting too.

Petra Soukupová (1982) is a novelist, script editor and screenwriter. She studied scriptwriting and dramaturgy at Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. She is one of the most successful contemporary Czech novelists. To date she has published several novels for adults and books for children. She is the recipient of numerous awards and nominations; her books regularly make it onto bestseller lists and have been translated into ten languages. Since 2009 she has been a regular contributor to themed short-story anthologies from the publisher Listen. Some of her books have also been made into films. For her prose debut K moři (To the Seaside, 2007) she received the Jiří Orten Award and was nominated for the Josef Škvorecký Award and the Magnesia Litera Award. Her second book, the triptych of short stories Zmizet (To Disappear, 2011), won the main prize – Book of the Year – as part of the Magnesia Litera Awards in 2010. She lives and works in Prague.