By Lisa Graff
Amazon rating: 4.7/5, grades 3-7
Good Reads: 3.62/5
Common Sense Media: 3/5, ages 8+
4Rbooks: 3/6, grades 5-8
217 pages
Synopsis:
Camp Atropos is a summer camp for children with special talents. Not music or artistic talents, but unique and special ones. Like most summer camps, the children will swim in the lake, sing songs by the campfire, and prepare for a show on the last night. Lily, twins Church and Ellie, and brothers Renny and Miles are cabinmates who have all come with their talents, and secrets.
The camp director, Jo, also has a secret. She uses the magical waters of the lake to copy the talents of the children and then gives them to a man who sells them to Fairs, people without any talents at all.
Choices, decisions, and crazy events lead to a strange week as memories begin to disappear and talents get switched to other campers. Jo is determined to get control of the talents while the cabinmates of cabin 8 work together to return them all to the rightful campers.
Parental Guidance: medium-high
When they first arrive at camp, boys and girls are put in the same cabin
and a counselor/cabin leader is never indicated.
Some of the talents are not nice and are not used in kind ways.
A couple of incidents where siblings are not kind to each other, one event
could have been potentially dangerous.
Theft is a major plot line throughout the book.
Recommendation:
This is a sequel to a book I reviewed last year entitled A Tangle of Knots. I would recommend reading the first book to help understand the events of this book, but I didn’t really recommend the first book last April. I gave it a “meh” rating which I have given this book, too. Neither is terrible, but they were both confusing and highlighted child behaviors that weren’t positive. This story bounces back and forth between characters. That would be confusing enough, but each character has a unique talent, each talent has a special name, and they get switched. I found it difficult to keep up with all the details. I’m not sure how well the normal elementary or middle school student would handle that. I’d be afraid they would lose interest, fast.
This might work as a teacher or parent read aloud where there was help available in keeping track of everyone and everything. Maybe a wall chart : ) Some of the interpersonal relationships would also be good starting points for talks about doing the right thing, being kind to others, and looking at the big picture, not just one’s own self-interest.
A fun thing to note, one camper, Hannah, has the talent of making punch in a variety of flavors. Her recipes are interspersed throughout the book.
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