Brain Camp by Susan Kim and Laurence Klavin – Review

Welcome to Camp Fielding, the Summer Camp of your nightmares! It’s a camp where you’ll get the education of a lifetime, whether you want to learn or not. It’s guaranteed to transform the dumbest teen into worthy material for Harvard or Yale, and if you’re not a bird-brain when you enter through its gates, you will be one before you exit them!

Brain Camp by Susan Kim ( Courage the Cowardly Dog and Are You Afraid of the Dark) & Laurence Klavin (Edgar Award winner), who collaborated together in the First Second graphic novel City of Spies, is enhanced with beautifully rendered drawings by Faith Erin Hicks (Zombies Calling and The War at Ellsmere) and glossy vibrant color artwork of Hilary Sycamore. These four people have created in Brain Camp a graphic novel with very eye-catching illustrations and a plot that might make you suspicious of your parents’ motives (or those of any adult) when they say: “We’re doing this for your own good!”

Teens Jenna and Lucas are the main characters of Brain Camp.They come from different families and backgrounds. Jenna’s parents are concerned that their daughter is not making much progress in high school, and they’re jealous that the daughter of friends of their that come to a party at their house is only fourteen and is an expert at the piano and is going to attend Yale in the Fall. They want Jenna to also excel at school, and go to college at Yale or some other prestigious college. In Lucas’s case, he’s being raised by his mother, who often gets drunk. He’s committing petty crimes, breaking into cars, and his grades are low.

Jenna’s parents meet with a mysterious man after the party, and the man offers Jenna a chance to attend Camp Fielding, as there have recently been two teens who have left the program. They are seen at the start of the graphic novel, coughing up feathers and seemingly changing their facial appearance, and developing bird-like features. Lucas’s mom is visited by the same man, who offers the same proposition for Lucas. Their parents send them to Camp Fielding, hoping for the best.

You can probably guess that Jenna and Lucas become almost immediate friends. They don’t eat the food all the other campers are eating, because it looks like disgusting gray slop. Instead, they sneak energy bars from people’s backpacks and lockers, and steal pizza from a delivery truck. Everyone else around them start getting smarter, making Jenna and Lucas wonder if they’re doing the right thing by not going along with what everyone else is doing. But, everyone else is also getting throbbing, gross, veined growths on their foreheads they try to hide with their bangs.

The camp personnel, Lucas sees one night while hiding beneath a bunk bed, are giving the campers shots while they sleep. What could they be up to? He and Jenna are told they’re being given the shots to prevent them from getting sick, like the two campers at the start of the book did, but they can’t help but think they’re being lied to, and they investigate on their own.

Will Lucas and Jenna give in, also get the shots, and turn into bird-brains themselves? Or, will they manage to escape Camp Fielding, and warn their parents about what’s really going on there? Will their parents even care, or be more concerned about Jenna and Lucas getting smart, no matter what the cost?

There’s only one way to find out, because this bird-brain ain’t gonna tell you any more! That’s to buy Brain Camp, read it, and see for yourselves! It may not be for younger kids, because it does show some gross things like the foreheads I mentioned, dead birds, and Jenna and Lucas kissing, but it’s definitely a fun graphic novel that tweens and teens should enjoy checking out.