be prepared

Did you go to summer camp as a child? I did, for a week-long religious camp when I was in 5^th, 6^th, and 7^th grades. It was a summer highlight (along with outdoor summer swim team!), and I have vivid recollections of camp-wide water balloon fights, arts and crafts, lakeside activities, and drinking coffee for the first time. But because the camp I went to was religion-focused, and only a week long, I always envied the girls in The Parent Trap or in books who went away to camp for months, or whole summers even, and pulled complex pranks! I wanted a taste of that freedom, independence, and mischief. Vera Brosgol’s middle grade graphic novel Be Prepared is an autobiographical take on her own summer camp experience – which wasn’t what she expected at all, and yet formative all the same. And (bonus!) it made me feel a bit better about never being sent away for a whole summer!

In Be Prepared, all Vera wants to do is fit in—but that’s not easy for a Russian girl in the suburbs. Her friends live in fancy houses and their parents can afford to send them to the best summer camps. Vera’s single mother can’t afford that sort of luxury, but there's one summer camp in her price range—Russian summer camp.

Vera is sure she's found the one place she can fit in, but camp is far from what she imagined. And nothing could prepare her for all the "cool girl" drama, endless Russian history lessons, and outhouses straight out of nightmares!

When young Vera’s attempts to make friends with girls from her suburban school go embarrassingly (and hilariously, in retrospect) awry, she decides that Russian summer camp is the answer to her problems. Surely there she will fit in and find people who will appreciate her! But it turns out that at camp Vera has just exchanged one miserable experience for another – and the camp doesn’t have running water!

Brosgol’s camp story chronicles experiences that will be familiar and/or recognizable to all – feeling different or excluded, wanting to fit in, and having a “thing” or experience built up so much in your head that turns out to be not-so-great after all. Brosgol treats her past self with grace and humor, drawing laughs out of her audience as she remains true to past events, hurts, and relationships.

Be Prepared is a dose of reality – the kind that will make you tear up in sympathy for young Vera’s plight and feelings, laugh at an unexpected turn of events, and at the end, sigh with contentment. It’s a story well-told, and beautifully illustrated. It’s a perfect summertime read for the tween set, and adult readers will find much to sympathize with as well. Brosgol’s art, dialogue, and pacing all combine to create a book that you won’t want to put down, and will want to put in others’ hands ASAP as soon as you’re done.

A good portion of the hilarity in Be Prepared comes from Brosgol’s depiction of her younger self – especially her eyes. They’re almost as big as her face, surrounded by glasses, and intensely expressive – here you can see all of Vera’s anxiety, worry, and disappointment laid bare. Brosgol imbues her art with emotion, and the reader feels it. The page spreads illustrated in shades of olive green, black and white will appeal to fans of cartoons and animation, and though panel sizes vary, the focus is nearly always Vera and her reactions to various experiences.

Be Prepared is a summer camp memoir that’s perfect for fans of Lucy Knisley’s Relish and Shannon Hale’s Real Friends, and any graphic novel fan who is ready for a story filled with humor and heart!

Recommended for: graphic novel readers ages 8+ who enjoy the work of Shannon Hale and Raina Telgemeier, and anyone who went to camp or wanted to go – and found it different than they expected!

Fine print: I received a finished copy of this book from the publisher for Cybils Award consideration. I did not receive any compensation for this post.

coffee obsession: the beginnings

I am a coffee addict. Not recovering, not proud, just…addicted. I established that fact in my very first blog post, actually. What I haven’t shared so far is the story of how I arrived at this state of affairs. It all began in my twelfth summer…

Actually, back that up. I’m fairly sure (although NO, I don’t have any DNA or genetic marker evidence in front of me at the moment) that my coffee obsession is inherited. I say this because every one of my mother’s siblings is a little obsessive about hot drinks. I know, it sounds bonkers. It probably is. But my theory is that there is a hot beverage addiction that runs on my mother’s side of the family. Coffee and tea, mostly, but after years of observing my own relations, I know that hot chocolate and hot water will do just as well in a pinch. I have an uncle who does NOT leave the house without at least one thermos of hot tea, and who orders it either hot or iced at every meal. My mother will not leave the house without a hot beverage, regardless of lateness or number of people waiting. And then there’s my own unhealthy obsession. So it all started with genetic predisposition, and watching my mother drink prurient amounts of coffee throughout my childhood. My dad, on the other hand, gave up coffee sometime before I can remember it clearly. And I remember my mother admonishing us kids several times when we were younger and telling us that we should never drink coffee, or we’d end up like her (and for a while, that was a very successful threat, let me tell you!).

But to get back to my twelfth summer: the long and the short of it is that I went to summer camp. Summer camp was glorious (just thought I’d put that in there as I’ve recently met people who had dismal experiences). I adored the early morning Reveille wake-up calls, the activities, crafts, Frisbee, water slide, inner-tubing on the lake, water balloon wars, evening speakers, singing by the campfire and enormous late-night games of kick-the-can, flashlight tag or pony express. It was FUN. It was also incredibly tiring. Even kids who normally careen off the walls can be over-scheduled at camp. So by the fifth night or so, I needed an infusion of something to keep up my energy levels. Wonder of wonders, the camp cafeteria had coffee. Coffee had mystical powers back then. Sure, it tasted gross (I’d sipped some from my mothers’ cup on previous occasions), but it smelled delicious, I knew that it helped keep you awake, and all of the counselors guzzled it as if it were ambrosia. Its merits were therefore several: it had a strange usefulness, popularity, and the allure of (possibly) conferring ‘maturity’ upon its drinker.

I downed a couple of cups at every breakfast thereafter, and went home to tell my astonished (and unhappy, I’m afraid) mother, fait accompli, that “I drink coffee now.” It was relatively easy to so pronounce it as an established fact. I knew my mind and what I wanted and thought I deserved, but looking back I might have also been in a ‘forceful’ stage (nicer than saying ‘bratty’ straight out). Of course that experience didn’t immediately morph into my present addiction, but it was the start. At the end of the same summer we went on a family vacation to a beach in Maine, and there were plans to watch the sun rise over the Atlantic. One morning at 6am, shivering in the cold and a little damp from sea spray, I was included in the 'adults-only' coffee-drinking group for the first time.

And I have been a coffee imbiber ever since. My mother is very thankful to report that none of her other children have taken up the habit (although Lincoln will drink a cup to be sociable).

To end with, the YouTube clip that inspired this post: