Camp Secrets: Camp K-9 by Mary Ann Rodman

"WE'RE CAMP K-9 PUPS, AND WE'RE THE BEST!" HOWL THE DOGS ON THE BUS.

ALL EXCEPT ME.

I HAVE A SECRET TO GUARD. IT'S IN MY POOCH POUCH, SAFE IN MY LAP.

Roxie's secret is her blankie, hidden at the bottom of her Camp K-9 backpack, something she is ashamed to admit that she must have to feel safe. But keeping a shameful secret is hard work, and it makes making friends with her bunkmates in the Mutt Hut hard.

"BUT BEING FRIENDS MEANS SHARING SECRETS, AND I CAN'T SHARE MINE," SHE THINKS.

Roxie has one built-in bond with her bunkmates, though. They are all afraid of the pushy poodle Lacey, who bullies everyone right from the start. When Lacey pushes Roxie off the bunk she has chosen and marked with her pooch pouch, Roxie is afraid to stand up to her, and the other campers pretend not to notice so that they won't have to stand up to Lacey either. But Roxie can't help noticing that Lacey hangs on to her own pooch pouch, too, even as she bosses her all the way through their canoeing lesson.

"I WANT MY BLANKIE AND I WANT IT NOW!" ROXIE THINKS TO HERSELF.

At last the long first day of camp is over and Roxie is comforted by the thought of her blankie, waiting safely stashed under her pillow. But as the campers turn in for lights out, a sharp-eyed girl make a surprising discovery!

"A BLANKIE! LACEY'S GOT A BLANKIE!

The rough, tough Lacey sleeps with a blankie? The Mutt Hut mates are astounded and sense a chance to get even with Lacey for her meanness all day. But then Roxie has a moment of truth.

"WAIT A MINUTE! SHE'S SCARED. SHE'S NOT REALLY MEAN. SHE WAS JUST HIDING HER BLANKIE, LIKE ME!"

Mary Ann Rodman's and Nancy Hayashi's brand-new Camp K-9(Peachtree, 2011) handles one of the fears that sleepover camps bring out in the bravest of campers, the fear that the others will find something about them to tease, and the idea that everyone has their own fears is consoling and the means to a giggly resolution to this situation, as the other girls break out their own blankies at bedtime. Pair this one with Laura Numeroff's recent similarly themed story, The Jellybeans and the Big Camp Kickoff for a pair of stories which will help ease those pre-camp jitters.

Undercover Cat: Cat Secrets by Jeff Czekaj

STOP! STOP READING RIGHT NOW! THIS BOOK IS FOR CATS ONLY!

Three cartoon cats take the venerated volume out of its locked museum case and share the sacred text. Their leader begins to read aloud.

THE FIRST CAT SECRET IS....

But his buddy whispers a warning that there is an unauthorized reader out there in readerland! Our orange-striped narrator has to do an immediate security check. Right in the reader's face, he boldly insists on proof that they are not a bird, a snake, dog, fish, boy, bear, girl--or heavens forbid--a MOUSE!

You say you're a cat. Prove it. The top cat orders the reader to meow, to purr, to stretch like a cat. They watch. Hmmm. Not bad. Okay, it's safe to proceed with the reading.

WAIT! The infallible test of cathood first. Napping. Unfortunately for our trio of cats, even that word brings on somnolence and one by one their eyelids droop and they begin to softly snore, to the great glee of a clever mouse, who has been waiting and watching on the edge of the page, to making a snatch for Cat Secrets.

Jeff Czekaj's well-crafted Cat Secrets (Balzer & Bray, 2011) uses only feline facial expressions and word balloons to play out his little scherzo in which the sneaky Mouse out-cats even these felines with cat-itude.

But a (moving) picture is worth 1000 words, so here's the really clever trailer for this one.

A great picture book for sharing aloud or for beginning readers to giggle over all by themselves.

Camp Rocks: The Jelly Beans and the Big Camp Kickoff by Laura Numeroff

It's summertime and the Jellybeans, a group of girls united by their love for those little oval, bright-colored candies and their passion for their individual interests are off for their first sleepover camp experience. They are a bit nervous on the bus, but with each other for support, they feel they'll fit in just fine.

And they all do, except for Nicole. Emily hangs out at the studio with the other devoted dancers and builds leg strength on long nature walks. Artsy Bitsy starts making everyone personalized macaroni necklaces. And bookworm Anna hits the camp library for books on the local flora and fauna. But to her dismay, Nicole finds that there is NO soccer team at Camp Pook-a-Wow. Bummer!

"I'm sorry, Nicole," said Mrs. Jangley-Cheezer, "but Camp Pook-A-Wow doesn't have a soccer team. There are lots of other sports you could try."

Gamely, Nicole tries out all the camp sports. A self-proclaimed tomboy, she's good at most of them--swimming, archery, kayaking--but for a girl who takes her soccer ball to bed, she feels somehow out of sync at camp despite the usual fun of campfire ghost tales and marshmallow roasts. The other Jellybeans are right at home at Pook-A-Wow, but Nicole still feels like the odd Jellybean out.

Then she gets an inspiration! The nearby rival camp has a soccer team. Perhaps she can recruit some campers, share her skills, and give Camp Pook-A-Wow a winning team. Now if she can just get her best friends to lend their skills to the action, she may just salvage her summer.

Laura Numeroff and Nate Evans again combine the authorly skills with noted illustrator Lynn Munsinger in the latest in their best-selling series, The Jellybeans and the Big Camp Kickoff (Abrams, 2011) in a light-hearted confection of a picture book which makes the potentially traumatic first camp experience go down like a spoonful of sugar. Numeroff's little heroines again show that their individual differences and interests provide strength to their group of friends as they master yet another of the milestones of childhood with their friendship still alive--and kickin'.

Summer Loves: Thirteen Plus One by Lauren Myracle

The thing about BIRTHDAYS, at least fourteenth birthdays is that they're more...well...complex than every single birthday that came before. Or maybe the only reason I thought so was because I just this very day turned fourteen. Me me me me me me! Fourteen, fourteen, fourteen, fourteen!!!!

Fourteen years and counting, baby. That was a lot of birthdays!

Winnie Perry feels different, even though there are still three months left of junior high. High school looms ahead, scary, yes, but a long-sought milestone of maturity, and suddenly Winnie feels the importance, if not exactly the weight, of her years. Suddenly things seem more poignant, more significant, and Winnie is compelled to compose one of her famous lists for the last few days before she enters high school:

TO DO BEFORE HIGH SCHOOL

SAY OUT LOUD WHAT I WANT OUT OF LIFE

BE SPAZZY

BUT ALSO PRACTICE BEING OLDER SOMEHOW

DO SOMETHING TO HELP THE WORLD (LIKE THAT THREE CUPS OF TEA GUY)

BECOME FRIENDS WITH SOMEONE NEW

TAKE CHARGE WITH LARS!

DO SOMETHING SCARY,

But Winnie flubs her new rules on the very day of her birthday. She just knows her ninth-grade boyfriend is going to know what she really wants--for him to present her with a darling cupcake with a pink candle, followed by a sweet kiss, in full view of everyone in her cafeteria. But he fails the best boyfriend test big time, nonchalantly handing her a Starbucks Gift Card after school. Somehow Winnie is disappointed. Logically she knows he can't read her mind, but selfishly, she can't help believing he should have picked up on the hints she slipped to him before the big day.

Things seem to going downhill with Lars from there on. And when Lars announces that he's going to be away with his mom, who is studying in Germany, for the whole summer, Winnie somehow feels that she needs to get even, and when shy Dinah gets caught hiding weird Mary's shoplifted stash in her locker and her father declares that she has to attend a "leadership" camp most of the summer, Winnie decides to go along and books them into an ecological beach camp, helping sea turtle hatchlings. Cinnamon, her temporarily boy-hating other best friend, also finally agrees to come along at the last moment and the three BFFs are headed off for the sand and sun of South Carolina.

There the friends deal with living with other teens--including some really great boys and a couple of, well, different girls--in a big old house on the coast, where they get much more than killer tans out of the experience. Dinah finds her first boyfriend, shy and sweet like herself, and Cinnamon suddenly gets over the trauma of being dumped by Bryce midyear and falls for the lanky James. Winnie is torn, flirting with the hunky and somewhat overbearing Alphonse, and worrying about her relationship with Lars which is also in the swamp for the summer.

The three friends all find themselves growing through the new experiences in understanding and self confidence, and in the latest for the New York Times best-selling Lauren Myracle's Thirteen Plus One (The Winnie Years) (Dutton, 2010), she continues her solid but light-as-cupcake frosting tales of Winnie. Winnie is a wonderful character, developed in a series of books centered around her eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, and now fourteenth birthdays. As with Phyllis Reynolds Naylor's excellent Alice series, young teens could do worse than grow up as best friend of the honest, funny, and basically decent Winnie Perry.

Trial by Water: Sports Camp by Rich Wallace

On the bus ride into Camp Olympia, eleven-year-old Riley Liston is beginning to feel that he's made a big mistake.

He loves sports, and a two-week camp where he gets to do every sport--from fishing to basketball--had seemed like a good idea last winter. But Riley's heart sinks when he sees that he's going to be the runt of the camp, one of the youngest among a bunch of bigger, hairier, scarier guys, especially the show-off "Fat Barry," ruler of Cabin 3. A dedicated swimmer, Riley even feels the lake losing its appeal when Barry launches into his first campfire story, the "legend" of Big Joe, the resident giant snapper turtle of Lake Surprise.

"That thing had my foot in its mouth last year, I swear!" said Barry Monahan... "I've still got a scar."

"That thing" was Big Joe, the legendary resident of Lake Surprise. Said to be as wide as a wheelbarrow and as fierce as a mountain lion, the snapping turtle had been the subject of all kinds of stories on the three-hour ride from the city. They told of kids who'd lost fingers and toes, and of others who'd barely escaped.

Riley quickly finds out that, like it or not, Cabin 3 is his tribe for the duration, and, as counselor Shawn tells them at the start, kids in the other cabins are simply "your rivals." Everything in the camp is set up around a two-week drive for cabin points in daily rounds of competition--in softball, basketball, canoeing, the camp's own extreme version of water polo, even karaoke.

The older guys--Barry, Hernando, Vinnie--give Riley a hard time after his weak defensive play contributes to his team's loss in their first match-up in basketball, and in the after lights-out bull sessions, Riley fares no better.

"So how many girls have you made out with, Liston?" Barry said with a laugh.

"I don't know," Riley mumbled. He'd been hoping to stay out of the conversation.

"Can't count that high, huh, Riley boy?" Barry laughed again, and everybody else laughed with him.

"Don't worry, twerp, it'll happen one of these years."

"Leave him alone," Tony said. "He can't help it if his hair hasn't sprouted yet."

But Camp Olympia's all-sports program is actually a good fit for Riley's strong point--his endurance, both physical and psychological. Riley plugs along at his worst sports, basketball and softball, screwing up sometimes but occasionally managing to contribute to some wins for his cabin. A solid swim team veteran, Riley's quickness and staying power turn out to be an asset in water polo, and his speed and endurance begin to pile up some points in distance running. His quiet perseverance begins to win him some grudging respect from the older boys, and the rituals of midnight pranking between the cabins draw him into a kind of fellowship even with Barry and his cohorts. Then Cabin 3 canoers have a peculiar bonding experience when they are privy to a rare sighting of the legendary but unfortunately all-too-real Big Joe in mid-lake.

And then there's the big event--the speed swim across the lake and back. Just recovering from an all-nighter in the "Larry" (the latrine) caused by eating a proffered piece of Barry's five-day-old Jersey Chicken, Riley barely manages to qualify, but he doggedly begins to swim extra laps every day, keeping one eye out for Big Joe at all times. And when the date of the big swim race rolls around, it is obvious to Cabin 3 that Riley is their only hope of carrying off the all-sports Big Joe Trophy for the summer.

Veteran sports fiction writer Rich Wallace's recent Sports Camp (Alfred A. Knopf, 2010) is fast-moving tale with a likable and believable underdog character who learns to play to his strengths, with the additional theme that each member of a team has something to contribute. Short and easy-going reading, with each chapter's quotes from the Camp Olympia Bulletin updating the reader on current cabin standings, this one is a good choice for reluctant guy readers and for the fans of the sports novels of Dan Gutman, Tim Green, and Mike Lupica.