Lights Out!: Kids Talk about Summer Camp

The editors of this book spent a summer interviewing kids at camps in New Hampshire and Massachusetts. The campers' observations, broken down into such categories as ""Why I Went to Camp,'' ``Camp Food'' and ``Parents Day,'' contain doses of wisdom and wit: ``Next year I'm gonna try and come earlier, 'cause if you come earlier you get a better bed.'' By its format alone, this could have been the camp version of Kids Say the Darnedest Things, but there are some comforting pearls for first-time campers: even old-timers don't always get the counselor they want; independence and homesickness can exist side by side; all the kids in this book manage to survive camp. Comic line drawings pepper the pages, keeping the tone light. Sometimes funny, sometimes serious (``I was afraid people would laugh at my name''Edgar, age 11), the comments in this book could reassure campers that their experiences are both one of a kind and universal. (8-up)