Wolf Camp

May 4, 2009
What happens to a girl who spends two weeks at Wolf Camp? More than her genteel parents bargained for, suggests McKy (Pumpkin Town!
). Maddie returns with leaves in her hair and a propensity to crawl on all fours. When food appears, she puts the family collie in its place: “She growled, which sounded like gravel grinding in her belly.” Maggie goes on to chase squirrels and howl alongside the collie, and her diet changes, too—“Maddie quit eating candy. Instead, she ate only meat” (in one creepy scene she eats a grasshopper). Maddie's mother is left wide-eyed, while her father retreats behind his newspaper. Leick (Impetuous R., Secret Agent
) draws Maddie with the face of a child, but the wasp waist and long legs of a teen. Curiously, the story allies itself more closely with the parents' point of view—when he hears she'll be going to Bear Camp next summer, Maddie's father has the last laugh: “Maybe we'll get lucky and she'll hibernate.” Kids usually enjoy disruptions to the staid world of grownups, but civilization ends up looking pretty good here. Ages 4–8.