Willows vs. Wolverines

February 1, 2017
How to balance the tantalizing promise of popularity against supporting your needy very best friend? That's the choice Izzy faces at her new, mostly white summer camp.Best friend Mackenzie keeps offering clues that Izzy's headed down the wrong path, but the 12-year-old is tone-deaf to the hints that the new "friends" she's bonding with are shallow and unkind. The inseparable twosome's BFF relationship devolves into an oddball situation with Mackenzie secretly--then reluctantly--providing Izzy with ideas for pranks to play against a cabin of rival male campers, which Izzy attributes to her fictitious older brother, invented to boost her credibility. Her notable lack of understanding of Mackenzie's position, related in her dismissive first-person voice, both makes her an unpleasant character and may leave readers wondering why her friend ever liked her. It's a situation poised, inevitably, to collapse into a messy disaster. Although Izzy eventually, uncharacteristically, recognizes her mistakes, it's hard to ignore her previous behavior, leaving the expected satisfying conclusion feeling a bit flat and insincere, with only Mackenzie's emerging spirit seeming fully believable. Brown-skinned Izzy is biracial, with a Latino dad and a white mom, and her cabin mates include an Indian-American girl, an Asian girl, and another dark-skinned girl, but the novel's default is white. Frequent summer campers are the ones most likely to run this effort up the flagpole. (Fiction. 10-13)

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March 1, 2017

Gr 5 Up-Izzy Cervantes and her best friend Mackenzie reluctantly head to a new summer camp (Camp Foxtail) after a family dispute makes attendance at the familiar Camp Sweetwater no longer possible. The girls are assigned to different cabins, and while Mackenzie decides to accept fate and be miserable alone, Izzy wants to break out and make new friends. When she hears about the long-running prank war between her cabin, the Willows, and the boys' cabin, the Wolverines, Izzy concocts a story about her older brother Tomas (she does have a brother Tomas, but he is only five years old) being a former Camp Foxtail resident and genius prankster. She hopes her lie will help her become accepted (and respected) by the other girls. Each successful prank against the Wolverines cements Izzy's bond with her new friends while also straining her relationship with Mackenzie. As summer camp draws to a close, Izzy discovers who her real friends are and Mackenzie learns that she can stand on her own. Through Izzy's detailed, first-person narration, the novel provides a humorous look at the summer camp experience, and although the pranks seem overly elaborate, the book does offer a realistic view of fleeting summer camp relationships. VERDICT Tween and young teen readers who have had their own summer camp experiences will enjoy this title and appreciate the inclusion of a strong Latina character.-Anne Jung-Mathews, Plymouth State University, NH

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