Camp Sylvania by Julie Murphy
I received a copy from HarperCollins Children's Books through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Maggie is excited to spend her summer at Camp Rising Star with her best friend. Things are going great until her parents reveal that they’re sending her to a fat camp called Camp Sylvania the night before she’s supposed to leave for a fun summer with her best friend. Maggie’s summer plans just blew straight out the window, and it’s about to get worse now that fat camp is worse than she expected when fellow campers start going missing.
When I saw this book, I knew I had to read it. We follow Maggie as her parents are shipping her off to the fat camp her mother once attended now that it’s under new ownership. Of course, Maggie is furious about it, and I don’t blame her one bit. Poor Maggie has been made to feel that she’s not good enough due to her weight, and now this insecurity is thrown in her face as she’s blindsided by the news that she’s not going to theater camp with her best friend.
One of the things I like about this book is that it has a lot of positive messages. We watch Maggie make new friends and start to learn to embrace her weight and appearance. At the same time, we see the camp’s new owner’s own self-hatred and fears come to life through the camp that she now owns and runs. We get to see a combination of characters who are either fat and learning to accept themselves, characters who encourage the kids at the camp to enjoy who they are, and then characters who either hate themselves or are just outright prejudiced toward plus size folks. With a supernatural twist, we’ve got a fun book for middle schoolers with some great messages that teaches one to like and accept themselves.
I will say that the supernatural twist takes a while to get rolling, but the foreshadowing is wonderful and it’ll be fun for middle schoolers to put two and two together as they read. It’s an excellent read and I’m excited to check out more books from the author, especially since it appears that they mainly write stories that follow overweight characters.
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