Thursday, April 11, 2013

J is for Janet Lennon at Camp Calamity

(For the 2013 A to Z Blogging Challenge, I will be featuring one book each day, that begins with that day's letter, that made an impression on me.  This means that for some reason, I didn't just read that book and forget about it.  No, I still think about it after some period of time has passed.) 


Title:  Janet Lennon at Camp Calamity
Author: Barlow Meyers
Original Publication Date: 1962
Date I First Read: Sept 1986
Basic Category: Juvenile Fiction / Series
Basic Summary: Fictionalized Janet Lennon (of the Lennon Sisters and Lawrence Welk fame) has nothing to do this summer.  She is fourteen, and her sisters are all busy or married.  Suddenly she gets the opportunity to be a counselor at a summer camp.  They need her there immediately!  Pretty soon she is involved in all activities and drama the camp provides. 
What I Remember About the Book: I had no idea who the Lennon Sisters were.  I got the book from the bookshelf in Grandma’s basement.  It had been my mother’s, apparently.  I read the book in no time at all.  I remember that one of Janet’s charges - Karen, the scholarship girl -liked birdcalls, and had her teach the other girls.  This same camper also ran off and discovered new trails, which Janet uses to get a kidnapped girl.    

What I Took Away From the Book:  Yes, you can have a boring summer even if you are a famous singer.   Yes, you can have an exciting summer if you are suddenly needed as a camp counselor.   (Actually, I always thought that was kind of stupid, because I never had a boring summer.  Ever.  Even as a kid, there was swimming, biking, piano practice, and lots and lots of books (not for school) to read for fun. There were stories to be written too, in secret notebooks.  I always thought that people who were bored were boring people . . . and that as long as there is something to read or a piece of paper and a pen to be had, there was absolutely no reason to be bored! 

Rating (1-5 stars):  3.5 

Here is a link to the Lennon Sisters today:  http://www.lennonsisters.com/home.html

4 comments:

Dani said...

This sounds like an interesting read! Thanks for sharing.
Dani @ Entertaining Interests
#warriorminion

Anonymous said...

I'll add this to my life of books to read. Thanks for the recommendation!

Unknown said...

How do you remember all these books you read as a kid? I remember stories, but not titles and authors so much. Should have kept a reading journal, because I probably read hundreds of books before I finished high school. :) I love this idea for an A to Z theme! :)

Jaimie at Living in the Light
A to Z Ambassador

ketabgirl2 said...

Jaimie - I started a list in a notebook (mostly without authors - just titles) when I was 11. At the time, I said the book had to be at least 50 pages long to make the list. At that point, I thought back previous years and tried to write down every single book that I had read (except textbooks for school - those didn't count, in my mind at the time). Two years later, I re-did my list - by hand - in another notebook and put them in alphabetical order by title, and rated them all. During high school, I just intermittently added titles to the list - trying to recall two or three months of reading at at time. I was even worse as an undergrad - until one summer, when I wasn't at work waitressing. I typed all of my versions of the list into a document, and was really good about updating it for a while . . . except the two years I was in grad school. . . My reading for fun time was spotty anyway. My first year in a full-time job, I was also bad about recording titles at least. However, in late 2000, I started dilegently keeping lists again - on my personal website! In 2007, I started transferring my lists to LibraryThing with approximate dates or at least year - that I could recall reading a book for the first time. I should post a real blog about this.