May 28, 2019 - Anastasia Suen

Camp Shady Crook
by Lee Gjertsen Malone (Author)

Booktalk: It’s Ocean’s Eleven set in a summer camp as two kids try to one-up each other in a con competition at a camp that isn’t quite what it seems . . .

For Archie, the start of summer means another stint at Camp Shady Brook, where there is a lot more to the camp than meets the eye–just like Archie and his now blended family. But thanks to a con Archie developed last year, he’s finally somebody–and he’s not going to lose that status to the new girl, Vivian.

For Vivian, thanks to an incident That Shall Not Be Named or Spoken Of, her summer of exotic travels with Mom and Dad has turned into traveling to a dump of a summer camp in the middle of nowhere.

But thanks to perfect timing, Vivian soon finds herself in a ring of kids trying to out-con each other–and discovers Camp Shady Brook is more like Camp Shady Crook. And when one final, massive con could cost Vivian the first friends she’s had in a while, can she and Archie figure out a way to make things right?

Snippet: Vivian took the long route back to the Rainbow Smelts’ cabin after the bonfire so she could brainstorm. Conning someone like Sasha out of fifty dollars was going to be hard. Not impossible, but not as easy as getting a few dollars from one of the Bluegills, or even train fare from a grown-up in Grand Central Station back home in New York. This kind of scan would take real planning, and real work.

What was the first rule of con artists? Know your mark. Even though she hated that she could hear Archie’s instructions in her head, she knew he was right. And if there was any mark she knew well at Camp Shady Crook, it was Sasha-from-the-Bus, who’d been hanging around her since the first day of camp. The only problem was that as much as she tried, she couldn’t help but like Sasha.