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inkhearted 's review for:
Nerd Camp
by Elissa Brent Weissman
To be fair, this should maybe be a 3 1/2...
Gabe, an only child, is really excited to have the chance to meet his new stepbrother and have the sibling he's always wanted. The only trouble is they seem to have nothing in common. Gabe is so anxious to be seen as "cool" to his new sibling, he squashes down all of his nerdy tendencies, his math club membership, his reading habits, and most importantly--he conceals the truth about being admitted to a very selective science camp over the summer.
This is one of those stories that hinge on a very common device that I think of as "The Big Deception." The protagonist carries out a charade which becomes too big and goes on so long that it runs away from them. In every Big Deception story, a reckoning is always inevitable, it's only a matter of when and how. In this story, the lie doesn't feel so very big. He covers his science camp by pretending it's a normal sleepaway camp, and since he barely has a chance to get to know his stepbrother very well before embarking on his journey, there's hardly much of a reputation to lose. With these deceptions, the stakes have to be high for it to really count, and it just doesn't feel that way.
On the plus side, most of the book is spent at "nerd camp" and that part is really fun. For all the hemming and hawing motions Gabe goes through, the story is really about letting your nerd flag fly, and it does THAT well.
Gabe, an only child, is really excited to have the chance to meet his new stepbrother and have the sibling he's always wanted. The only trouble is they seem to have nothing in common. Gabe is so anxious to be seen as "cool" to his new sibling, he squashes down all of his nerdy tendencies, his math club membership, his reading habits, and most importantly--he conceals the truth about being admitted to a very selective science camp over the summer.
This is one of those stories that hinge on a very common device that I think of as "The Big Deception." The protagonist carries out a charade which becomes too big and goes on so long that it runs away from them. In every Big Deception story, a reckoning is always inevitable, it's only a matter of when and how. In this story, the lie doesn't feel so very big. He covers his science camp by pretending it's a normal sleepaway camp, and since he barely has a chance to get to know his stepbrother very well before embarking on his journey, there's hardly much of a reputation to lose. With these deceptions, the stakes have to be high for it to really count, and it just doesn't feel that way.
On the plus side, most of the book is spent at "nerd camp" and that part is really fun. For all the hemming and hawing motions Gabe goes through, the story is really about letting your nerd flag fly, and it does THAT well.