Monster Camp
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
Ghost Squad meets Hotel Transylvania in this sweetly spooky fish-out-of-water middle grade “mirthful monster mashup” (Kirkus Reviews) about a human girl who must put on the performance of her life when she realizes what she thought was a LARPing summer camp is full of real monsters!
With her stick-on fangs and widow’s peak drawn in waterproof eyeliner, Sylvie is an expert at pretending to be a vampire. More kids at school would know that if they bothered to join her monster LARPing (live action role playing) club. Not even her dad understands her passion for the undead and denies her request to attend a monster LARPing summer camp. But Sylvie is not so easily deterred.
She decides to tell her dad she’s attending another camp located near Monster Camp then sneak over to her real destination after he drops her off. Sylvie feels bad lying to him, but there’s no way she’s going to miss the chance to finally meet other kids that share her interests. And when she lays eyes on Monster Camp, she knows it was all worth it—the immersive campgrounds look like they came off a Hollywood lot!
But when an obnoxious kid dressed like a werewolf gets punished by being magically turned into a Pomeranian, Sylvie realizes she made a critical miscalculation. These aren’t LARPers, they’re real monsters, and Sylvie’s preferred costume means she’s placed with blood-sucking, human-biting campers who would breathe fire if they knew the truth about her. She has no choice but to try to stick it out by doing exactly what she does best: pretending to be a monster.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The founder of Evermore Middle School's Monster LARPing Club, 11-year-old Sylvie Shaw loves to embrace her inner monster, constantly role-playing as a vampire to remain connected to her late horror-fan mother. Glad to have Sylvie interacting with others instead of constantly watching monster flicks, her father plans to send her to summer camp but forbids Monster Camp, which promises a full week of fully immersive monster role-playing. Finding a way to attend via a nearby survival skills camp, Sylvie doesn't take long to discover that Monster Camp isn't for would-be monsters, but for real ones—ghosts, werewolves, witches, vampires, and more—and that she must somehow prevent anyone from realizing she's a human in their midst. What starts out as worrisome eventually becomes fun, but how can Sylvie remain true to the camp's motto of "be kind and be yourself" when she's misleading others? Via an eerie but endearing summer camp setting, this middle grade debut from Henning (It's All in How You Fall) considers the cost of intolerance and what it means to belong, as seen through the eyes of a resourceful protagonist trying to find herself and her people. Sylvie cues as white. Ages 8–12.
