Camping

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian Studies at
Concordia University and an avid outdoor recreationist. She is the
author of several books, including The Mountain Is Moving: Japanese
Women’s Lives, Kurlek and Margaret Laurence: T

This large, soft-covered introduction to a family’s first camping trip
is lyrical and imaginative in its portrayal of sleeping in a tent and
cooking over a fire. The family’s three children would have preferred
Disneyland or malls, but money is scarce.

Wary, the three gradually become converts to camp food and even the
nighttime “blanket of darkness.” And to the quiet. Swimming and
exploring are also pleasures learned slowly, along with camp fires and
“less o’clock.” They return home proud to call themselves campers
and eager to return to camp again.

Nancy Hundal and Brian Deines have successfully collaborated on several
children’s books, including Prairie Summer (1999) and Number 21
(2001). For this book, Hundal has drawn on her childhood memories along
with her deep appreciation of nature, her imagination, and her love of
language. Deines’s warm, vibrant paintings set the tone for the story.
The book’s soft, spineless format includes a colorful dust-jacket
featuring a family cooking marshmallows over a fire. Highly recommended.