You will have to appease me if you want to participate in the Monday Discussion today. Over the weekend I picked my daughter up from her very first sleep away camp. She had a fantastic time.
While we were there watching the camp's closing ceremonies, they gave the final tally of the week long competition between the purple team campers and the gold team campers. There were 3 categories and the camp director announced the total points for each. As they were doing this, my son [with us in the audience] said, "This is just like Hogwarts!"
He was correct, it was just like the tallies at the end of each Harry Potter novel to see which house was the champion for that school year. [For the record, my daughter was "gold" and they won 2 out of the three competitions.]
Now my brain kicked into high trying to match books to the situation we were in, and I immediately thought of last year's well received The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer which is set at a summer camp. [Which I have been meaning to read for a while now.]
And then, in my Friday email box, I had the weekly PW Tips email with this great list of the best boarding school novels, which by the way has Never Let You Go at the top of the list. Click here for my book group report on this novel. [This is one of my all time favorite books, but there is a HUGE twist that if the reader knows about it ahead of time, will ruin the entire novel.]
So it all came together, summer camp pick up led to conversations about Harry Potter led to more summer camp books led to the best boarding school books. I love living a book-centric life!
So what about you? You should join in on the book suggestion fun. For today's Monday discussion, share some of you favorite books set in a location where children are at sleep away camp or boarding school. There are plenty to choose from.
For past Monday Discussions click here.
I discover that although I attended camp as a kid, I evidently haven't read about it as an adult; I browsed through the OPAC and couldn't find a thing I've actually read - although Anne Rivers Siddons' book Burnt Mountain looks like something I'll choose in the future.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, I find the phrase "Boarding School" made me immediately think of many enjoyable reads from the past, but my top three are: To Serve Them All My Days by R.F. Delderfield; A Separate Peace by John Knowles; and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark.
The best one, by far, is Bless The Beasts And The Children by Glendon Swarthout. It is about a group of teen outcasts who leave a summer camp in order to illegally release buffalo from a designated hunting area. It has a very deep and heavily symbolic ending which goes beyond what is usually seen in young adult literature. An excellent film version was made in the early 70s.
ReplyDeleteFunny you should ask this. I recently devoured Curtsies & Conspiracies by Gail Carriger, the second in her "Finishing School" series. The first is entitled Etiquette & Espionage and I whole-heartedly recommend it.
ReplyDeleteThe setting is Victorian England - if Victorian England were filled vampires, werewolves, mad scientists, mechanical men, and steam-powered dirigibles, that is. Sophronia Tammanick is a horribly un-ladylike young lady who climbs into dumbwaiters to spy on her mother's conversations and takes an improper interest in how things work. A lady does not worry herself with the gears and pulleys of mechanical servants. Sophronia's mother ships her off to Mademoiselle Geraldine's Academy for Young Ladies of Quality without the slightest suspicion that in addition to appropriate curtsying and proper use of parasols, Sophronia will also be learning poisons, deception, vampire politics, and knife-fighting. You see, Mademoiselle Geraldine's is a school to train young women to be spies and assassins.