Be Prepared by Vera Brosgol

In her second graphic novel after Anya’s Ghost, Brosgol tackles middle grade with a more realistic (but perhaps just as terrifying) story about sleepaway summer camp, based in large part on her own experiences. When nine year old Vera hears about Russian summer camp from an older friend, she’s so excited about the prospect that she convinces her mom to send her and her little brother. Finally, Vera thinks, she’s found a place where her Russian culture won’t make her different.

Once she gets there, she changes her tune. Vera is the youngest girl in her proscribed age group and shares a tent with three other girls who are several years older and don’t appreciate having such a young kid hanging out with them. The bathroom is simply an outhouse, the other girls bully her, she’s terrible at capture the flag, and she’s made fun of for not being able to read Russian very well (though she can speak it fluently). In a place she thought she would easily fit in, she sticks out.

Brosgol’s part-memoir, part-fiction is funny and full of heart. Kids who have been to summer camp will recognize a lot of common elements, like the gross bathrooms and “beautiful” nature that seems to want to kill you. Social structures and the struggle to make friends are universal to all kids, even those with no experience with summer camp. The fact that Vera is at a specifically Russian summer camp adds another layer to the story, and non-Russian kids will be fascinated. As part of the back matter, Brosgol reproduces an actual letter she wrote while at camp when she was a kid, begging her mom to pick her up because summer camp is so terrible. It’s hilarious and perfect, and her graphic novel is a wonderful distillation of the summer camp experience.

All Summer Long by Hope Larson

Hope Larson brings us another middle grade graphic novel about summer vacation, this time about staying home while your best friend goes off to camp. Thirteen year old Bina is disappointed (an understatement) when her best friend Austin decides to go to soccer camp for a month during the summer instead of hanging out with her like he usually does. So Bina watches a lot of tv, plays a lot of guitar, and listens to a lot of music. Things start to get more interesting when Austin’s older sister starts to befriend Bina; I felt a lot of familiar feelings when she took Bina on a babysitting assignment and then left her to watch the baby while she went to meet her boyfriend. Were any of us at thirteen years old actually qualified to babysit?

When Austin returns home from camp, he’s acting even weirder than he was before he left. Bina doesn’t know what’s up; the reader might hazard a guess, but she’d probably be wrong. The real reason is more mundane and perhaps also more complex than readers are conditioned to think.

This isn’t an action-heavy, event-heavy comic. It’s a pretty true catalog of what a middle schooler’s summer vacation might look like, but it doesn’t bore. Larson is good at getting inside Bina’s head and making us care about her; thirteen year old readers will definitely identify with the pains of a friendship changing, of feeling out of place when the things you’re used to are all topsy-turvy, even though the adults in your life don’t seem to think any of it is a big deal. I wouldn’t call this a standout story, but it’s fun and real and a great way for a kid to pass a summer day.