Sue, whose adventures with her family in Honduras were covered in Miss Quinces, is finally allowed to go to a two week sleep away camp in Upstate New York with her friends. Her older sis ter Carmen will be a counselor, and her younger sister Ester is going along as well. Her friend Same is also attending, and the two are in the same cabin. Their counselor is Minji, and Sam's friend Marisol is there as well. All of the campers introduce themselves by their pronouns, and there are a wide variety of identifications among both the counselors and campers. While there are some traditional camp activities like archery, bracelet making and being outside, there are also Live Action Role Playing Workshops. A culminating activity in a carnival. Sue has to deal with Ester being very clingy, some light friend drama, and whether or not she "like likes" Izzy, who wants her to be his girlfriend. The author includes pictures of herself at summer camp in the early 2000s, as well as a note about how much it influenced her life.
There have been a number of graphic novels about summer camp lately (Miller's Stuck, Agarwal and Durfey-Lavoie's Sink or Swim, Karim Summer Vamp, LaMotte and Xu's Unhappy Camper, Smith, Tanner, and Gomez's Absolute Zeros: Camp Launchpad, Mercado's Chunky Goes to Camp, and this is another solid entry, but it felt like I was missing a LOT of information. In Miss Quinces, Sue's mother was against her going to camp, and I wasn't sure how her sister ended up as a counselor. Readers who liked the first book and want more of Sue's story will enjoy this one.
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May 20, 2025 by Little, Brown Ink
E ARC provided by Netgalley
Millicent and her sister Gillie live with their parents in a flat in a house with their landlady, Nona, and her sister Babs, who are both older and crochety. Millie's mother runs an aquarium consulting business, and their father has stopped being a professor and now washes window. Millie's neighbor, Sam, annoys her with constant nicknames and random observations, and Gillie is constantly bringing bugs into their shared room. When Millie meets another older woman in the attic, doing puzzles, she starts to realize that the puzzles control the lives of the people around her. She tries to "fix" everyone, but just ends up making Gillie less fun, and sets an infestation of monkeys on Sam. She keeps trying to make things better, but only makes them worse, to the point where her parents say they have no children. Consulting Nona and the other ladies, Millie finds out secrets about them and the puzzles. Trying to change people's lives has caused a rift in the world that sucks people into another world. Will Millie be able to change things back the way they were?
This had an interesting premise, and the three Fates don't get much coverage in middle grade literature. I did enjoy Sam, and how Millie slowly became friends with him. The cracks in the world made the situation more dire; I sort of wish that Millie had to deal with various changes in the people she knew in more realistic ways instead. I liked the drawings of the house.
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