Danger Zone: Summer Camp

Hi, friends,

False spring got us again! Last week we had an ice storm that knocked our power out for a couple of days and our internet out for the better part of the week, this weekend was beautiful and sunny and warm… and now our meteorologists are freaking out about a storm that is supposedly going to dump over a foot of snow on us?

In all honesty, I’m rooting for the snow—whenever anyone brought it up at the library yesterday, I started chanting TEN FEET! TEN FEET! TEN FEET! This time of year, it goes away pretty fast, and I could be into one last bonus, end-of-winter snow day. We’ll see what happens.

Only after the sun had risen and she couldn’t go back to sleep did it occur to her that someone stealthy could just cut open the screens on the door or any of the windows and sneak inside with a lot less fanfare.

—Camp Scare, by Delilah S. Dawson

Two months before Parker Nelson finishes up seventh grade, a group of popular girls in her class decide to make her life a living hell. It’s so bad, and the school is so desperate to make the situation go away, that she is awarded a scholarship to go to one of the best overnight camps in the state. Ever the optimist, she looks forward to a totally fresh start—new people, new friends, new things to learn and do.

And then she walks into her cabin and discovers that she’s bunking with Cassandra DiVecchio, the very same girl who kicked off all of her troubles at home—who immediately proceeds to poison everyone against Parker. And because she’s a legacy camper who’s known all the other campers—AND the counselors, AND the camp administrators—for years, no one even considers listening to Parker’s side of the story.

Ostracized from her entire cabin, she’s surrounded by teen counselors who don’t want to hear about it:

...she was beginning to see that counselors weren't adults with authority. They were just slightly older teens who wanted to do as little work as possible and avoid dealing with uncomfortable situations.

And adults who flat-out don’t believe her:

Much to Parker’s embarrassment, Belinda squatted down beside her and put her fist under her chin as she made a frowny face. “I know it can seem like everyone is against you, but usually, that means you’re being your own worst enemy. I’ve been here for ten years, and I’ve never seen a kid who didn’t eventually get bitten by the Camp Care bug. You might try talking to Foggy or your counselors, get some tips about how to make friends. I can tell you right now that sitting out during lake time isn’t helping. And neither is a constant frown.”

Parker finally makes a friend at the evening campfire—a girl from a different cabin, a girl who understands what Parker’s going through. But then the girls in Parker’s cabin start having accidents—some of them really, really dangerous—and Parker starts to worry that there’s something darker and uglier going on at Camp Care than anything that Cassandra DiVecchio could dream up.

Yes, I didn’t even get into it up there, but Camp Scare is a ghost story! A VERY VERY DARK ghost story, so much so that the reveal of the inciting incident made my jaw literally drop—the story behind the haunting is ghoulish and mean and tragic, MUCH closer to the This Is Maybe A Slight Escalation But I Kind Of Get It revenge slasher end of the spectrum than the It Was All A Big Misunderstanding end of the spectrum.

This ghost is not just lonely, this ghost is ANGRY—and while I don’t think most readers will root for the ghost to SUCCEED, I do think that most readers will at least understand why with the lashing out. But even with the strength on that front, what got me about Camp Scare—what made me absolutely love it—is that Parker’s experience at camp, even WITHOUT the ghost, is already the stuff of horror.

It definitely, definitely struck a nerve in re: my own memories of being a tween. I love middle grade horror in general—ghosts, monsters, possession, I’ll read it all—but my very favorites are always grounded in a main character’s lack of control. That’s one of the hardest and most frustrating things about being a kid—Parker doesn’t have control over where she lands, about she spends her time or who she spends it with.

She tries and tries and tries to tell people what is happening—she does all the things we tell kids to do in these situations—and again, NO ONE BELIEVES HER. So she stops trying, and then she gets blamed for… not being cheerful? Not trying to join in and make friends? It’s incredibly maddening, incredibly realistic, and I found myself doing a whole lot of all-caps muttering at the adult characters.

Bonus points for another thing I always love to see in horror stories: Parker uses video game rules and horror movie tropes to unearth the hidden history of Camp Care, and ultimately, to survive.

I’m excited to see that Dawson has written horror for older audiences as well—I’ll definitely be tracking those down when they’re available.

Thanks for reading Bookshelves of Doom! Subscribe for free to receive new posts.

Coming later this year

Tales From Cabin 23: The Boo Hag Flex, by Justina Ireland
Tales From Cabin 23: Night of the Living Head, by Hanna Alkaf

Geared a little younger than Camp Scare, the Tales from Cabin 23 books are structured a bit like Are You Afraid of the Dark?, with a framing narrative about a Mysterious Cabin at a summer camp, where kids occasionally get trapped and forced into listening to SCARRRRRYYYY STORIES told by a shapeshifting entity who feeds on their fear. The Boo Hag Flex integrates Gullah boo hag folklore (which, good lord, boo hags are wonderfully awful and scary and, like my fave scary things, tragic); Night of the Living Head integrates the Malaysian penanggalan (also scary, also tragic).

Both books are fast-paced, creepy reads; both balance real life family stories with danger and scares; both include some wonderfully disgusting gross-out sequences. I especially appreciated The Boo Hag Flex for making the point that not all jerks are monsters; on the equal and opposite end, I especially appreciated Night of the Living Head for making the point that not all monsters are jerks.

I’m really excited for more installments in this series—in the meantime, I’ll be looking for more stories about vampiric entities based in traditions BEYOND Europe. I’ll love Dracula and Carmilla forever, but the world is way bigger than them.

Thank you for reading Bookshelves of Doom. This post is public—feel free to share it!

The police officer was looking at Tasha now, and so she started walking again, ducking her head as she passed the adults. She wasn’t thinking about them, though. Instead, her mind kept replaying the sight of that arm, the way the muscles looked ropey and defined, and the bright white hue of the bony fingers. It looked like someone had turned the arm inside out. Or had peeled the skin right off. She had just reached the wood-chip-covered play area when she felt a curious shift in her middle. She bent over and threw up Cocoa Bits all over the playground. It was still less gross than that skinless hand.

—Tales From Cabin 23: The Boo Hag Flex, by Justina Ireland

Unhappy Camper, by Lily LaMotte, Ann Xu, and Sunmi

From the same team that wrote and illustrated the lovely Measuring Up, Unhappy Camper is NOT a horror story set at summer camp—but don’t worry, our protagonist is still miserable! This one is about a pair of Taiwanese American sisters who reacted to a bullying incident very differently: Claire takes pride in and embraces her heritage; Michelle pretends it doesn’t exist. For years now, Claire has gone to Taiwanese cultural summer camp and absolutely adored it—this year, to Michelle’s dismay, their parents are sending them BOTH. Funny, heartfelt, thoughtful.

More soon, assuming I have power? I hope all is well with you.

Leila