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Not a Happy Camper: A Memoir | 
 enlarge | Author: Mindy Schneider
Publisher: Grove Press
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  16 reviews
Sales Rank: 546202
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.8
ISBN: 0802143695
Dewey Decimal Number: 920
EAN: 9780802143693
ASIN: 0802143695
Publication Date: May 13, 2008
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Shipping: International shipping available
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Product Description
Remember those long sultry summer days at camp, the sun setting over the lake as you sang “Kumbaya”? Well, Mindy Schneider remembers her summer at Camp Kin-A-Hurra in 1974 just a wee bit differently. Not a Happy Camper chronicles a young girl’s adventures at a camp where the sun never shines, the breakfast cereal dates back to the summer of 1922, and many of the counselors speak no English. For eight eye-opening and unforgettable weeks, Mindy 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 the camp’s hidden past. As she focuses on landing the perfect boyfriend and longs for her first kiss, Mindy unexpectedly stumbles across something infinitely grander: herself. Hilarious, charming, and glowing with nostalgia, Mindy Schneider’s memoir is a must-read for anyone who’s ever been to summer camp, or wishes they had.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 11 more reviews...
Absolutely delightful! September 17, 2008
This is an hilarious memoir of an adolescent's first summer at sleep-away camp. If you remember what it's like to play color wars, sing ridiculous songs which insult camp food, have your first crush, drink "bug" juice, well, then your experience is not even half as fun as Mindy's, whose camp's meals were salvaged from train wrecks, whose camp's truck was one that could only be ridden in for as long as you could hold your breath (against the fumes), and whose characters are 12 year old versions of Henny Youngman and Totie Fields.
 Repetitive, predictable, but amusing memoir lasts almost as long as an endless summer camp September 17, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Readers will find that enduring Mindy Schneider's entertaining memoir of summer camp life is much like her experience: a seemingly endless trudge through a benignly monotonous, routinely humorous and absolutely predictable right of passage. "Not a Happy Camper" faithfully recreates Schneider's thirteen-year-old awkwardness, and self-deprecatory voice is full of genuine Jewish angst and humor. Nevertheless, there is only so much you can say about a pathetically decrepit Maine summer camp and its stereotypical denizens. Schneider takes about 230 pages to recount what she could have told in 25.
Duped by the slick-talking owner of Camp Kin-A-Hura (Hebrew for "Are You Out of Mind for Sending Your Child Here?"), Mindy's parents succumb to a barrage of sweetened lies and sign their resigned daughter to a summer's worth of unsupervised, unstructured (unless you consider binge consumption of candy an organized event) and uninspiring activities. There, Mindy discovers the joy of listening to rain on the roof, eating institutional food whose origins and nutritional value are at best dubious and interacting with a group of disaffected, disinterested and disillusioned Jewish early adolescents.
Naturally enough, Mindy wrestles with the weighty issues of trying to navigate the entire summer unnoticed by the cool kids and getting a boyfriend. It doesn't require a genius to predict that the relatively plain Mindy will set her sights on the camp's hunk, only to be consistently rebuffed, all the while letting the gem (the dork who undoubtedly will grow up to be a real mensch) slip through her fingers. Parading with her in this laissez-faire fairyland is a group of characters right out of central casting: the overbuilt air-brained beauties, the sophisticate who believes in reincarnation, the sleepwalker, the recluse and the oversexed camp counselors, whose main advice is akin to "leave us alone."
Mindy is bright enough to understand that the camp divides itself into two: the "Legacies" and the "Losers." Naturally enough, the Legacies, the "children of former campers," are "rich kids destined to lead relatively easy and productive lives." The "Losers," unsurprisingly, are "paste-eaters...conned into coming to this place in spite of the unbridled self-doubt and absolute lack of social skills." Schneider attempts to depict a certain poignancy in the interaction of both groups; sadly, the results are flat and unsurprising.
After a delightful thirty pages or so, "Not a Happy Camper" descends quickly into a seemingly interminable monologue about summer camp. For those who have graduated from this so-called life-altering time away from home, the head-nodding recognition of pranks and pratfalls could dangerous veer into whiplash. For the uninitiated, this memoir will convince them that they really haven't missed much at all.
Full of Spirit May 27, 2008
This book is a humorous recollection of what many remember as bad days away at summer camp. The experiences had me wondering how she survived all of them and lived to tell the tale. Unlike most camps, the camp which Schneider attended had no solid rules making for some interesting experiences.
I highly recommend this book to everyone who has ever attended a summer camp, and for those who haven't, I will assure you that this does not happen at all camps.
All the fun of camp in the comfort of your own warm bed December 15, 2007
I looked forward to reading this book each night. Although I'm about 15 years younger than Ms. Schneider, my memories of Jewish summer camp are similar. Ms. Schneider remembers the feelings of young adolescence so well and captures the funny small moments that are so true! This is a story that I want to share with my sister and friends.
 If you like camp stories...that's about all there is! September 29, 2007
This book delivers what it promises---a camp story. There isn't much else here, just the story of one summer at a camp in Maine. The camp wasn't what was advertised, but it turned out to be a great summer for Mindy anyway, especially in retrospect. I think the book aims to mean a little more than that, and be about discovering character traits, learning about appearances vs. truth, etc, but I don't think it really does that. It just tells in a fairly amusing way what the summer was like.
I am not a big camp person, having crawled home with homesickness after a few days both times I tried to go to overnight camp, but I read this book as it was set in Maine. However, it was only in a very small way about Maine. There are a lot of summer camps in Maine, and overall I think they aim to have as little contact with "the locals" as possible. This camp had a bit more than some, due to some property issues, but overall the locals are portrayed as fairly scary Deliverance types. One girl is shown not to be, but Mindy never even learns her name and seems a bit shocked that a local could be nearly human. I grew up in Maine during the time period of this book, and I don't think campers from other areas would really have any clue how different their lives were than most Mainers, and would have no idea how this could create resentment.
From that perspective, it was interesting to get a look at Maine during that period from the other side! The writing is well done and enjoyable. If you went to a similar camp to the one Mindy did, you would probably really enjoy this book. Just don't look for a lot more.
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