Secrets at Camp Nokomis

Children's Literature - Lois Rubin Gross

American Girl, Rebecca Rubin, is taking a vacation from her Lower East side neighborhood to visit Camp Nokomis in the New York countryside. Rebecca is looking forward to making new friends and having adventures, while also escaping the specter of a polio epidemic sweeping the city. When Rebecca gets to camp, however, she discovers that Corky, a tough-talking Irish girl, sees herself as the top girl at camp and uses bullying tactics to keep her position. The mystery in the title involves Rebecca's bunkmate, Tina, who is Corky's target for bullying and seems to have a secret locked in a storage trunk. There is also a spooky folk monster, the windigo, who the girls think is haunting the camp. As expected, this book is good clean fun with a heavy dose of relationship problem solving and a spoonful of history to introduce the reader to another time and place. Corky is a stereotypical "street kid," but readers will see that the problem of bullying is ageless and that building summer friendships took as much work a century ago as it does now. The author quickly dispatches the issue of religious difference when Jewish Rebecca chooses to abstain from eating bacon but compromises on the issue of eating strictly kosher food. An appended history lessons shows girls at a very early twentieth-century "fresh air" camp and addresses the stigma that poliomyelitis created for children before the 1954 introduction of the Salk vaccine. Girls who love the "American Girl" books will embrace this new and engaging chapter in Rebecca's life. Reviewer: Lois Rubin Gross