January 1, 2020
Summer campers vow to make each other popular in their respective social circles. Bea, a white girl, and Maisy, a mixed-race girl with white and Filipinx heritage, had been best friends until Maisy joined a popular clique reminiscent of the one in Mean Girls. Now a year has passed without a word between the two rising middle schoolers until they meet on the bus taking them to Camp Amelia for the next six weeks. Here the tables are turned, as veteran camper Bea has become tight with fellow bunkmates over the years, and Maisy finds herself on the outside for once when she's placed in the Sunflower Bunk along with Bea and her friends. In this series opener, told in Maisy's and Bea's alternating perspectives, Moskowitz-Palma introduces a cast of mostly white campers with varied abilities and interests (e.g., having dyslexia, modeling professionally, and playing soccer) before ratcheting the tension. The Sunflowers are determined to win the camp's top athletic prize; ever anxious Maisy, on the other hand, is nervous about everything related to the competition. All seems doomed until Bea and Maisy make a pact: Bea will get the Sunflowers to befriend Maisy, and Maisy will get her school pack to include Bea. In the process, Bea also confronts her parents' divorce, and readers (and Bea) discover the reasons why Maisy's really at camp and her seemingly perfect mother went away. This solid mix of s'mores and girl empowerment is encouraging but never saccharine. (Fiction. 8-12)
COPYRIGHT(2020) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
April 1, 2020
Gr 3-7-Maisy and Bea are ex-best friends who have spent the last year apart. Maisy became friends with the M & Ms, a group of popular girls whose names all start with M, and Bea became a loner. Maisy's mother is away for an unnamed reason, so her physician father signs her up for adventure camp to keep her busy in the summer. Now Maisy and Bea are thrust together in the same cabin at Camp Amelia, where Bea now has a tight group of friends from years of summer camp and Maisy is the odd girl out. Bea and her friends are very competitive and plan to win the coveted Amelia Cup, but Maisy might ruin those chances with her nonathleticism and anxiety around heights and swimming. Maisy offers Bea a pact-if Bea will help her fit in at camp then Maisy will get Bea in with the M & Ms when they return home. Meanwhile, Maisy spends time with Dr. Beth, the camp psychologist, trying to work out whether she can forgive her mother. The secret of her mother's problems is kept from the reader for most of the book and its reveal is handled sensitively; it turns out her mother has an opiate addiction. The cover may indicate a simplistic story about friendship, but this book has complex family dynamics and two protagonists with incredible depths. Narration alternates between the two girls, while letters and DMs home to family and friends help move the story along. VERDICT This is a powerful middle grade novel about the difficulty of both forgiveness and trust, as well as the nature of true friendship. Recommended for collections seeking summer camp fiction with depth.-Laura Gardner, Dartmouth Middle School, MA
Copyright 2020 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
April 15, 2020
Grades 4-7 When two ex-best friends with family issues are assigned to the same cabin at summer camp, will they overcome their differences, or will it ruin their summer? Bea and Maisy had been inseparable since preschool, but Bea was hurt when Maisy inexplicably abandoned her for a popular clique. Bea spent the school year alone but has close friends at camp. Now Maisy is miserable?those girls dislike her because her phobias and lack of athleticism doom their chances of winning the camp's athletics tournament. She and Bea make a pact: if Bea helps Maisy gain confidence and friends at camp, Maisy will make Bea popular back at school. Through alternating narrations and letters home, both girls reveal their true feelings. Half-Filipinx Maisy is afraid to tell Bea why she's really at camp. Bea's parents are divorced, and she feels left out by her dad and his new family. The shifting middle-school friendships and cliques ring true, and the revelation at the end guarantees readers will look forward to the next book in the series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)