Camp

June 11, 2012
Fourteen-year-old Amy Becker dreads being sent to her Uncle Ed's sleepaway camp in Maineâshe worries that she won't make friends and hates the idea â¨of leaving her autistic younger brother, Charlie, with her chilly and image-â¨conscious mother. After Amy arrives at camp, a cruel camper named Rory taunts her at every occasion and puts her through a mortifying "initiation, " stripping Amy naked in front of two boys and throwing her in the lake. Meek and naïve, Amy has to lose her self-pity, boost her self-esteem, and make a friend to survive. While bullying is the focus of Wolf's debut novel, the author throws in a wide range of additional dramas and tragedies (extramarital affairs, abandoned children, death) that overwhelm the narrative. In the last quarter of the book, Wolf works to explain Amy's mother's troubled history and tie up loose ends, but there's little to establish the book's historical setting (1962) and Amy's mother's German heritage, both of which end up being important to the plot. Ages 13â16. Agent: Jennifer Lyons, Jennifer Lyons Literary Agency.

January 1, 2013

Gr 6-8-Sent off in the summer of 1962 to Camp Takawanda, Amy Becker, 14, misses her autistic younger brother, Charlie, and her father, but not her carping German-immigrant mother, Sonia. Life at camp takes its toll when Amy becomes the target of bunkmate Rory's bullying. With lax adult supervision and Amy's inability to speak up for herself, Rory and her followers gain the power to intimidate Amy and rudely challenge counselors. On family visiting day, after Rory ingratiates herself to ingenuous Sonia and terrifies Charlie with a barking dog, Amy and her two friends decide to fight back and hope that Amy's Uncle Ed, owner of the camp, will send Rory home. To her credit, Amy attracts the attention of Andy from a nearby boys' camp and becomes an accomplished tennis player. Details of life in the early '60s add dimension to a plot that is rife with secrets about Rory, Uncle Ed, Sonia, and Amy's cousin Robin. Resolution comes in a melodramatic rush involving Amy's stealthy search through her mother's papers, Charlie's death after being hit by Sonia's car, a relocation to Connecticut, and Sonia's struggle with cancer, when she finally reveals to Amy details of her sad past. In a story told in retrospect as she is about to head to college, Amy is able to forgive her once-secretive mother.-Susan W. Hunter, Riverside Middle School, Springfield, VT

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