Be Prepared
Ratings22
Average rating3.7
"Beautifully drawn, brutally funny, brilliantly honest. Vera is such a good cartoonist I almost can’t stand it.” —Raina Telgemeier, author of Smile In Be Prepared, all Vera wants to do is fit in—but that’s not easy for a Russian girl in the suburbs. Her friends live in fancy houses and their parents can afford to send them to the best summer camps. Vera’s single mother can’t afford that sort of luxury, but there's one summer camp in her price range—Russian summer camp. Vera is sure she's found the one place she can fit in, but camp is far from what she imagined. And nothing could prepare her for all the "cool girl" drama, endless Russian history lessons, and outhouses straight out of nightmares!
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Popular Reviews
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Well written story about the perils of summer camp and friendship for an upper elementary/ middle school audience. Liked the inner look at Russian Orthodoxy and how true to the time the characters were - like the social hierarchy of owning American Girl dolls! I was a kid who dreamed of the summer camps I read about/saw on TV but never got to go, so would have loved this book as a young kid.
A cute story about how summer camp kind of sucks, which jibes with my experiences. I'm unimpressed by the artwork; the limited color palette was a weird choice.
Irrelevant side note: given this is autobiographical, the idea of a military-themed summer camp for children of Russian descent in the US is unsettling and good fodder for a conspiracy story about long-term infiltration.
