Ginny Off the Map

Hickey, Caroline and Murphy, Kelly (illus.) Ginny Off the Map
June 20, 2023 by Christy Ottaviano Books
E ARC provided by Netgalley

Ginny's family is in the process of moving from Fayetteville to Silver Springs, Maryland after school is out, but this is complicated by the fact that her father is going to be deployed to Afghanistan right after the move and will be gone until Christmas. As a military family, they are used to these moves, and her mother's job as a freelance copyrighter can be done anywhere. To keep Ginny and Allie occupied while she works on a new job, their mother enrolls both girls in summer camps. Allie quickly makes friends in their neighborhood, but Ginny is both anxious and laser focused on geography, and finds it hard to connect to other children. Her father always helped her out with transitions, but he is in Afghanistan and not able to call very frequently due to work and bad WiFi. When the geography camp is cancelled for lack of enrollment, Ginny is put into a jewelry making camp with a neighbor, Supriya, whose brother Rihan has been hanging out with Allie. She dislikes it so much that she convinces her mother to let her stay home. So she's not just sulking in her room, Ginny tells her mother she will start her own geography camp and have neighbor children meet on the porch. Allie agrees to help so she won't be expected to go to camp herself. When Ginny gets a few neighbor children, she sets up her camp more like school, and people are quickly disinterested. She's at loose ends again, worrying about her father incessantly, and concerned that she won't be getting into a math and science magnet school in the fall but will instead have to go to the regular school full of obnoxious kids. At the same time, her mother is trying to get a freeland job done, and neither girl is helping around the house. Can the family, especially Ginny,  find a way to settle into life in their new community and continue on until their father gets home?
Strengths: I would like to see more books about children who have to deal with parents being deployed, but there are relatively few books about military families. The moving that they do is unusual to the general population, and I'd like my readers to see a variety of depictions of this. This was also fascinating, because I wonder what children today DO in the summer when parents are working. There should also be a lot more books describing various summer day camps, like Vrabel's Caleb and Kit (although they do bunk off from camp!). This also had a good description of moving house that did NOT involve any ghosts or hauntings! 
Weaknesses: Ginny had several traits that made me wonder if she was on the autism spectrum, but this was never specifically addressed. Allie tells her to ask new people she meets what they like to do, and Ginny opines that she really doesn't care. She's also very obsessed with geography facts and doesn't really understand that other people don't share her interest. It was not surprising that her first camp wasn't successful.
What I really think: How were children in the 1970s able to put together fund raising "carnivals" (I'm apparently not making this up; read Backyard Carnivals for Charity!)? I know that when I was Ginny's age, I was babysitting a neighbor's four and six year old from 5 p.m. to 2 a.m. three days a week in the summer because the mother worked as a nurse and the father was traveling for business! It was good to see Ginny and Allie trying to do things on their own, but it was completely realistic that they struggled with it. Elementary students will love this one.