Not a Happy Camper

In this “hilarious” memoir, a woman recounts her memories of summer camp “that anyone who has ever drunk bug juice will cringingly recognize.” —The Wall Street Journal

It’s 1974 and Mindy Schneider is thirteen and determined to go away to her dream summer camp, where she imagines she’ll meet the perfect boyfriend. Her parents have only one condition: it must be a kosher camp. After poring over brochures for Jewish camps from coast to coast, she is sold on the promise of sultry summer nights, campfire songs, and endless fun at Camp Kin-A-Hurra in Maine—a decision she lives to regret.

In this laugh-out-loud memoir, Schneider reveals how her romantic dreams were dashed, and that she will learn more about herself over these eight weeks than she has in all her thirteen years. She’ll discover that boys who burn down their bunk the first week of camp may not be the best boyfriend material. Or that non-stop rain can actually be a bonding experience, especially when you have a lot of wildly unsupervised time with your eccentric bunkmates. In fact, what she finds is that she can survive just about anything, including torrential downpours, broken toilets, bad food, and a bunkmate who dances in her sleep. For eight unforgettable weeks, she and her band of camp buddies feud in a color war, fail at sports, and uncover Camp Kin-A-Hurra’s secret past. And even though she suffers some pretty awkward—sometimes painful, always hilarious—moments, what she sees by the end of her summer is something pretty spectacular: herself.

“Equal parts Ken Kesey and David Sedaris, a vivid recapturing of adolescence through the eyes of a marvelous writer.” —Wendy Werris, author of An Alphabetical Life