May 4, 2009
What happens to a girl who spends two weeks at Wolf Camp? More than her genteel parents bargained for, suggests McKy (Pumpkin Town!
). Maddie returns with leaves in her hair and a propensity to crawl on all fours. When food appears, she puts the family collie in its place: “She growled, which sounded like gravel grinding in her belly.” Maggie goes on to chase squirrels and howl alongside the collie, and her diet changes, too—“Maddie quit eating candy. Instead, she ate only meat” (in one creepy scene she eats a grasshopper). Maddie's mother is left wide-eyed, while her father retreats behind his newspaper. Leick (Impetuous R., Secret Agent
) draws Maddie with the face of a child, but the wasp waist and long legs of a teen. Curiously, the story allies itself more closely with the parents' point of view—when he hears she'll be going to Bear Camp next summer, Maddie's father has the last laugh: “Maybe we'll get lucky and she'll hibernate.” Kids usually enjoy disruptions to the staid world of grownups, but civilization ends up looking pretty good here. Ages 4–8.
July 1, 2009
After two weeks at Wolf Camp, Maddie acts in a most peculiar manner--howling at fire trucks, sniffing and snarling at the family dog, and even eating a grasshopper. Eventually she gets back to (almost) normal, just in time for Bear Camp the next summer. McKy's deadpan delivery and the illustrations of Maddie's wolflike behavior make for an amusing, offbeat book.
(Copyright 2009 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)