Not a Happy Camper

A “hilarious” memoir of the author’s terrible, and wonderful, summer at a Maine sleepaway camp in 1974 (The Wall Street Journal).   For eight unforgettable weeks at Camp Kin-a-Hurra, thirteen-year-old Mindy Schneider and her eccentric band of friends—including Autumn Evening Schwartz, the daughter of hippies, who communicates with the dead, and the sleep-dancing bibliophile Betty Gilbert—keep busy feuding in color wars, failing at sports, and uncovering their camp’s hidden past. As Mindy focuses on landing the perfect boyfriend and longs for her first kiss, she unexpectedly stumbles across something infinitely grander: herself.   “Set in what now seems an almost impossibly innocent time, the 1970s, this sweet tale takes a nostalgic look back at the experience of attending sleepaway camp through the eyes of a 13-year-old Jewish girl . . . Schneider succeeds in provoking gentle flashbacks to a simpler shared time of teenage angst and hormone surges, before cable television, all recalled in a humorous tone.” —Publishers Weekly   “Charming and hilarious . . . Captures both the awkwardness and the magic of that age.” —Jen Lancaster