This book has been on my shelf for quite some time, and somehow I never felt like picking it up. Maybe the cover was too bland. Maybe the Newbery sticker faded into the sand. I don’t know.
This weekend, though, I picked it up off the shelf, and wow.
I like Stanley and Hector and the other boys at the camp. I like the tiny hints of supernatural–happenings that are just a touch too convenient–but not so far out of the ordinary as to be unbelievable. It’s a surprisingly realistic book for an old-style fable that centers on a curse.
Like all the best old-fashioned fables, this story has a great ending, but the really wonderful part is the journey to get there. I’d highly recommend this if you still read middle-grade books at all.
