It’s August, and we fully understand if you’re planning your High Holiday menu and dreaming of sweatshirt mornings. But it’s still sweltering, our kids are still out of school and we haven’t eaten enough ice cream yet, so we’re not skipping ahead to fall anytime soon (in our personal lives, that is… at Kveller HQ we’re immersed in High Holiday content). Catch us at a lake or on a beach, or under a cool blast of AC, reading about the summeriest of summer settings: Jewish summer camp.
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The Jewish summer camp experience in this book hopefully isn't one you recognize, but you have to admit it's intriguing. At a summer camp for Jewish children in Guatamala, the campers are “forced to play a sinister game they can't afford to lose.” Many years later, one of these campers connects with his counselor.
I have to imagine that a 2005 book titled “The JAP Chronicles”didn’t age well, but this novel reuniting seven former bunkmates at a Jewish summer camp might at least feel nostalgic.
This is another summer camp reunion book, although this one leans more Judy Blume and less “Gossip Girl.” Two summer camp best friends reunite as counselors and must navigate their friendship as they cross the threshold between childhood and adulthood.
Full disclosure: "Girl’s Girl" takes place over a sticky summer in suburban Ohio, not Jewish summer camp, but something about Sonia Feldman’s writing calls to mind a lazy Shabbat day at camp, where there was nothing to do but sunbathe, gossip and decide which tank top you were going to wear to that night’s song session.
This thriller centers around a mysterious disappearance of a teenager on a Jewish heritage trip to the Azores, and the documentary the former campers make ten years later.
A favorite book of mine from over a decade ago, "The Interestings" follows six teenagers from their summers at camp into to adulthood.
A former camper returns to her childhood summer camp for a Jewish singles event — and is reunited with her one time camp crush.
