Book Review: Not a Happy Camper by Mindy Schneider

When I was growing up, I fantasized about going to summer camp. Not just a week of day camp like I had always done, but real camp. Sleepover camp. Two or four or eight weeks of being away from home, sleeping in a bunk bed. Daytimes spent swimming in a glittering lake, evenings spent roasting marshmallows over a fire, giggling uncontrollably from the sugar high. I've always suspected that it was an idealized fantasy, right up there with the one where childhood me was discovered by a famous agent at a local soda shop and propelled into child stardom. (The first clue that that would never be: We had no soda shop in my neighbourhood.)

The reality is that my camping experience would probably have more closely resembled Mindy Schneider's, as described in Not a Happy Camper. Lured by images of luscious greenery and luxuriant facilities (not to mention a kosher kitchen), thirteen-year-old Mindy convinces her parents that Camp Kin-A-Hurra is the place for her, rather than the rigid, prissy summer camps of the years before.

Between Mindy's pleading and a Lyle Lanley-worthy sales pitch, the deal is done. But after the long drive from New Jersey to Maine, the family discovers the camp is something different from what Mindy expected. Unkempt. In disrepair. The luxurious facilities are nowhere to be seen. The activities are minimal and chaotic. Disillusionment is inevitable. But Mindy made this decision herself and doesn't want to have her independence or judgment brought into question, so even as her heart sinks, she puts her chin up, waves goodbye to her parents and resigns herself to a summer that is not at all what she imagined.

And, in spite of the dirty bunks, the prison cook, the garbage/food truck and the unending rain, Schneider seems mostly to remember the moments of pleasure and discovery from her unhappy camper days. The book is full of longing for Kin-A-Hurra, sometimes even an overwhelming nostalgia. The angst and the drama are written about with affection, rather than the real, searing pain that Schneider likely felt in 1974.

Schneider's humour also serves to show how far she has come since Kin-A-Hurra. Though she is often self-deprecating, it is clear that she harbours a great deal of tenderness towards her thirteen-year-old self, something she surely didn't feel as an awkward, athletic, self-conscious camper. You can tell that Schneider wishes she could spare herself her mistakes with idolized Kenny and cold-shouldered Philip, even as she recognizes those first experiences with boys — and with camp — as important and formative.

Article Author: Bonnie

Bonnie writes about books every Thursday at Fourth-Rate Reader, about everything else at Signifying Nothing, and sometimes she resorts to pictures. She lives in Toronto.

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