Book Review: Hail Hail Camp Timberwood

Book Review: Hail Hail Camp Timberwood

Author: Ellen Conford

Date: 1978

Publisher: Little Brown & Company

ISBN: 0-316-15291-9

Length: 151 pages

Illustrations: drawings by Gail Owens

Quote: “We’re never going to be friends so we don’t have to pretend we like each other.”

This book is about a concept that seems to be overlooked in more recent discussions of child life: children need to learn to stand on their own feet. Thirteen-year-old Melanie recognizes this need when she sees it in a friend’s whiny, tag-along little brother, who can’t seem to amuse himself, but has some trouble recognizing it in her own relationship with her bunkmate Erica. Melanie and Erica can bicker and say mean things to each other all by themselves from the beginning of summer camp, and do that almost up to the end, before either of them considers the more grown-up alternative of leaving each other alone.

Along the way, this easy-reading children’s novel celebrates other parts of the summer camp tradition, beginning on the first page with a silly song (“Hail, hail, Camp Timberwood! Nobody likes it, nobody could...”) and including swimming, horseback riding, writing letters to parents (with a pencil), middle-school romances, and second-rate food.

It’s a cheerful, wholesome, lighthearted story, and although reports from those attemptng to raise middle school children these days indicate that cheerful, wholesome, lighthearted adventures are about as unfashionable in our overcrowded angst-ridden days as writing letters with pencils, somebody out there might enjoy fantasizing about a society in which people could imagine thirteen-year-old girls doing anything but preening themselves, being sexually molested, or fantasizing about flying around zapping people with their superpowers.

What’s not to love? Well...thirteen-year-olds don’t necessarily lose the ability to enjoy anything that’s written on a fourth-grade reading level, but apart from the distinctly thirteen-year-old idea that holding hands with a dance partner might be fun, everything else in this book is at least equally likely to appeal to eight- or ten-year-olds. And for nice normal fourth grade girls who think boys are yucky, this otherwise enjoyable story will be ruined by the preposterous idea of an otherwise sensible girl taking any interest in a mere boy. Of course we all know that girls mature at different rates—some eight-year-olds experience the kind of romance Melanie has in this story, and some thirteen-year-olds still think boys are yucky. The ideal is of course for girls not to take boys seriously until they’re all old enough to have serious relationships. Parents blessed with daughters who see the advantages of skipping the whole boy-crazy phase can support those daughters by not handing them books about thirteen-year-old romances.

Parents of daughters who are already obsessed with romance, however, can take heart; Melanie may be a little too eager to believe that a boy is either worthy of Love or In Love with her, but at least her love is the age-appropriate, hand-holding kind.