No Good Deed
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
He's not asking for much. All Gregor Maravilla wants to do is feed all the starving children on the planet. So when he's selected to join Camp Save the World - a special summer program for teenage activists from all over the country - to champion their cause, Gregor's sure he's on the path to becoming Someone Great.
But then a prize is announced. It will be awarded at the end of summer to the activist who shows the most promise in their campaign. Gregor's sure he has the prize in the bag, especially compared to some of the other campers' campaigns. Like Eat Dirt, a preposterous campaign started by Ashley Woodstone, a famous young actor who most likely doesn't even deserve to be at the camp. Everywhere Gregor goes, Ashley seems to show up ready to ruin things. Plus, the prize has an unforeseen side effect: turning a quiet summer into cut-throat warfare, where campers stop focusing on their own campaigns and start sabotaging everyone else's.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Moldavsky (Kill the Boy Band) delivers an over-the-top farce set at a summer camp for teenage activists. Sixteen-year-old narrator Gregor Maravilla, an avid Superman fan, and teen movie star Ashley Woodstone are among the campers who find themselves competing over the chance to win an internship with tech billionaire, humanitarian, and camp founder Robert Drill, sabotaging each other and not acting at all like young do-gooders. Moldavsky dials every aspect of the story up to 11, including the causes that the various campers campaign for: Ashley's is "Eat Dirt" (it isn't metaphorical), and Gregor starts referring to the other attendees by their passion projects as a prank war heats up ("Water Conservation cut off the water to the girls' showers. Abstinence and Sex Positivity had been locked in the sports shed together"). Ostensibly, it's all in service of exploring what happens when good intentions and conscientiousness collide with the selfish side of human nature, but without much depth to the characters or storyline, the effect is that of a single joke that goes on too long. Ages 14 up.
