Summertime Tales: Cowboy Camp and How I Spent My Summer Vacation

It's June and those lazy days of summer vacation are spreading across the land. Here are a couple of picture books which celebrate the splendid days of summer.

In Tammi Sauer's Cowboy Camp, her hero Avery knows he's in big trouble as soon as he reports for camp.

"He looked at everyone else at Cowboy Camp and knew he was all wrong. His belt buckle was too big. His hat was too small. His boots were too red. Even his name was wrong. The other boys had tough names like Hank or Jimmy Jean. Who ever heard of a cowboy named Avery?"

Things only get worse as the day progresses. Cowpoke chow makes Avery sick, and he has to give up grits and beans for crackers and cheese. When the tenderfeet tack up in the stables, Avery turns out to be allergic to his horse, and their leader Cowboy Dan, has a saddle up a steer for him to ride. At lasso lessons Avery can't make a loop to save his lariat and winds up with a case of rope burn, reducing his roping options to a wimpy length of yarn.

Around the campfire that night Avery broods over his misfit status. Suddenly a huge, scary figure appears out of the black night. "I'm Black Bart and I'm here to put an end to this 'Cowboy Camp.'" Thinking fast, Avery protests. "Pardon me, sir. This isn't Cowboy Camp. It's, er, ...Space Camp."

Black Bart is dubious, and puts Avery through all of the cowboy tests--beans, riding, roping--all of which Avery flunks, even spitting out the beans all over Bart. "Rustlin' rattlesnakes," snaps Bart, "I must've made a wrong turn somewhere. I gotta go."

Cowboy Dan claps Avery on the back. "Avery, you are about the bravest cowboy I ever laid eyes on. No one but a real cowboy could outsmart Black Bart the way you just did." The unconventional cowpoke has finally earned his spurs, and Avery is at last a happy camper.


In author-illustrator Mark Teague's skillful hands, his How I Spent My Summer Vacation (Dragonfly Books) tells another tall tale of summer fun out West.

Walter Bleff's teacher, seated properly at her desk, wearing her prim updo and spectacles, dutifully listens to his report on what he did on his summer vacation. Walter, however, is not one of your pedestrian essayists. He begins by reciting how his parents shipped him off to his Aunt Fern's ranch to bring him down to earth a bit.

"Your imagination is getting too wild.
It will do you some good to relax for a while."

Walter gets no chance to relax. As soon as he puts boots on the ground, he's kidnapped by a rowdy bunch of rough riders, who put the tenderfoot to work as apprentice cowhand. "Kid Bleff," unlike Avery, shows a real talent for punchin' cows, learning to rope, ride, and eat beans with the best of them.

But when Aunt Fern invites the whole band back to her spread for a real cowboy barbecue, the herd begins to stampede, heading right for the party. Quick-witted Kid Bleff snatches up a red tablecloth and making like a matador, turning the terrifying herd away to save the day. As the somewhat taken-aback teacher listens to the thrilling conclusion of his essay, we see Walter, still holding a longhorn by his nose ring, wistfully thinking, "I can't wait for show-and-tell!"

Teague's characteristic rounded comic characters are as full of personality as ever, and his bouncy rhyming text carries this summertime story along to a rip-snortin' conclusion.