Published in 2018, Breakout by Kate Messner is a middle-grade novel that tackles themes of racial bias, privilege, and community through a unique storytelling format. The narrative is set in a small town in Upstate New York that becomes the center of a manhunt after two inmates break out of the local prison. The story follows Nora Tucker, a middle school student and daughter of the prison’s superintendent; Lizzie Bruno, her best friend and confidant; and Elidee Jones, a new student from New York City. Events unfold through a collection of letters, sketches, poems, recorded conversations, and newspaper clippings intended for a community time capsule project. As the manhunt intensifies, the girls confront their own assumptions and learn about the town’s and their own personal biases. The novel explores Racism, Bias, and Privilege; The Media’s Role in Shaping Perception; Young People’s Ability to Confront Social Issues; and The Fear of Otherness.

Kate Messner has won the E. B. White Read Aloud Award, Golden Kite and Crystal Kite Awards, Riverby Award for Natural History Writing, and Nerdy Book Club Award. She is known for her ability to weave contemporary social issues into accessible narratives for young readers, and her work often encourages critical thinking and empathy.

This guide is based on the 2019 Bloomsbury Paperback Edition.

Content Warning: This novel and study guide include incidents of bullying, racism, and incarceration, and references to abuse and violence.

Plot Summary

The students of Wolf Creek Middle School have been given a summer assignment to contribute letters, drawings, and other documents to the Wolf Creek Community Time Capsule Project; the time capsule will be opened in 50 years by future residents. Aspiring journalist Nora Tucker and her best friend, Lizzie Bruno, have simple plans for the summer, but those plans change when two inmates break out of the nearby Wolf Creek Correctional Facility and the town fills with police and reporters. Meanwhile, Nora’s hopes of winning the race at the school’s annual field day are dashed by the arrival of much faster new student, Elidee Jones. Elidee and her mother have recently moved to Wolf Creek from New York City, and students whisper that Elidee’s brother, Troy, is an inmate at the prison. As she tries to adjust to Wolf Creek and the community-wide search for the escaped inmates, Elidee writes letters to her brother and poems that describe the biases and racism she experiences as one of only two Black students at the school.

Lizzie and Nora are consumed by the investigation, as Lizzie’s grandmother and Nora’s father both work at the prison. They begin experimenting with different kinds of writing to put into the time capsule, including recorded conversations, newspaper articles, and parodies that depict events from their perspectives. During the course of their investigations, Lizzie and Nora learn about the biases reporters can harbor, the way media shapes public perception, and that people in their community might not be as welcoming and open-minded as they always thought. Nora’s own biases shape her early interactions with Elidee; she is forced to confront racism when two boys at school repeatedly harass the new girl and when adults at a dinner held for law-enforcement refuse Elidee and her mother’s offers to volunteer their time to help.

Lizzie’s grandmother is arrested for providing the inmates with items they used to escape, and students begin to whisper about Lizzie. The investigation affects every aspect of life in Wolf Creek, keeping kids indoors, disrupting the birthday plans of Nora’s little brother Owen, and eventually causing the annual field day to be canceled. Students are instead invited to participate in a relay race at the Firefighters’ Carnival; Nora, Lizzie, and Elidee begin training for the relay together. As they get to know one another, the girls recognize and begin to move past their initial impressions. Just before the day of the race, the escaped inmates are spotted far away downstate. However, the carnival is interrupted just after the girls win the relay when two boys spot the inmates in the woods nearby, and everyone goes into lockdown.

After police find only cow hoofprints in the woods, Elidee remembers a report her brother did on bootleggers during Prohibition wearing special shoes that disguised their tracks as hoofprints; the three girls write a letter to law-enforcement suggesting this is how the inmates are continuing to evade searchers. Very shortly, police locate the inmates, killing one man and capturing the other. Everyone celebrates, but Nora feels uneasy about the outcome and about what she has learned about her community’s bias and privilege.

Elidee uses her poetry to reapply to a private school in New York City and is accepted; she and her mother move home, but she writes to Nora saying she hopes they will see each other when she comes to Wolf Creek to visit her brother. Nora reflects on all she has learned, and gathers the documents provided by Elidee, Lizzie, and others to add to the time capsule.