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Book Review: Camp
Dec. 6th, 2019 07:15 amDespite all my complaints about Kayla Miller’s Camp, I went on to read Miller’s earlier book about the same main character, Click. I actually liked Click much better, so success! - although reconsidering Camp in light of Click makes Camp look even weirder.
Camp is a book (or rather, I took it as a book) about a pair of best friends going through difficulties, so I expected Click to go into more detail about Olive and Willow’s friendship. However, Olive’s main struggle in Click is that she gets along so well with so many people that she’s struggling to figure out where she belongs now that cliques are beginning to form in her fifth grade class. How can she choose when she likes all her classmates?
This is probably one of the least relatable problems that I’ve ever read - oh no, Olive is too popular! THE HARDSHIP! - but Miller does a good job showing that it’s genuinely a problem for Olive. She’s friendly with everyone, but no one’s best friend. No one asks her to join their group for the class variety show, and she’s suddenly confronting the fact that she’s reaching an age where people are going to form cliques, and if she can’t commit to a particular group, she may end up left out. Friendly with everyone, but friendless.
Reconsidering Camp with this backstory in mind makes Willow’s actions look even worse. Her clinginess seemed unreasonable but understandable when I thought Willow and Olive were BFFs, but now that I’ve read Click, which makes it clear that Willow is merely one of Olive’s many, many friends, Willow’s expectation that Olive will hang out with her every second of every day at camp seems completely whack.
Camp is a book (or rather, I took it as a book) about a pair of best friends going through difficulties, so I expected Click to go into more detail about Olive and Willow’s friendship. However, Olive’s main struggle in Click is that she gets along so well with so many people that she’s struggling to figure out where she belongs now that cliques are beginning to form in her fifth grade class. How can she choose when she likes all her classmates?
This is probably one of the least relatable problems that I’ve ever read - oh no, Olive is too popular! THE HARDSHIP! - but Miller does a good job showing that it’s genuinely a problem for Olive. She’s friendly with everyone, but no one’s best friend. No one asks her to join their group for the class variety show, and she’s suddenly confronting the fact that she’s reaching an age where people are going to form cliques, and if she can’t commit to a particular group, she may end up left out. Friendly with everyone, but friendless.
Reconsidering Camp with this backstory in mind makes Willow’s actions look even worse. Her clinginess seemed unreasonable but understandable when I thought Willow and Olive were BFFs, but now that I’ve read Click, which makes it clear that Willow is merely one of Olive’s many, many friends, Willow’s expectation that Olive will hang out with her every second of every day at camp seems completely whack.
