Title: Welcome to Camp Fill-In-The-Blank

Author: Hope Dalvay

Publisher: Acornpress

Page count: 266

Stars: 4.5

Review: 

Hi there! Today I’m going to be sharing my thoughts on Welcome to Camp Fill-In-The-Blank by Hope Dalvay! 

So this is book 1 of Page’s adventures, Page is a 14 year old girl from Saudi Arabia, but she moves to Canada for the summer because it’s not exactly safe in Saudi Arabia in May of 2003, and her cousins are causing lots of havoc over in PEI, so she goes there to babysit them. See, Page is Canadian, her parents are from PEI, which makes Page Canadian even though she was born in Saudi. So, from reading the sequel BEFORE I read the first book, (not the best idea, I know) I knew a little bit about Page from before I met her again in Welcome to Camp Fill-In-The-Blank. I knew that Page Stewart was a girl born in Saudi Arabia, and that Saudi was where she grew up. When I read the second book, I got that Page had adapted to PEI a little bit more, and that she had a chance to settle down for a while, but for some reason I was still looking for more of a culture shock? Like she just came to PEI, which is this tiny island where everyone knows everyone, and it’s like this small community of people living on this island, versus where she came from was like a compound in the middle of the city (?) where she attended a British school, and feared for her own safety while learning how to “haggle” at the marketplaces because money was so tight. Yeah. How can you NOT have a huge culture shock after that? So that was one thing that I was expecting, but didn’t quite get from reading the sequel. 

Overall, I did like the story, the story being that Page goes allllll the to PEI to babysit her cousins who would much rather be going to summer camp, but then she gets a brilliant idea to let them go to camp without even leaving the house! So Page starts a summer camp in her backyard and calls it Camp Fill-In-The-Blank, where you “fill in the blank” with a new theme each week. It’s super fun to read about, much like My Year as a SPACE Cadet and it’s got a whole bunch of other fun stuff too! We’re introduced to the characters… and they all have very interesting names. The names in these books either reflect the personalities of the character or they are just plain ironic and really funny. Here are some names that made me laugh:

Page (like a page—like a book page)

WMD (stands for Warren Micheal Doyle, and he’s my favorite character in this book) 

DeLorey (I thought this sounded an awful lot like “DeLorean” and it turns out I was right) 

DeLorean Suzuki Gallant (I don’t even know what to do with this girl to be honest)

Mercedes (DeLorey’s sister)

Portia (DeLorey’s mom, her dad wanted to change his wife’s name to “Porsche”) 

Oleander (Oleander has a poisonous personality. What a surprise)

Danger (I’ll give you one guess on what he’s like)

Crusoe

Hanna (Her nickname is Hanna Banana)

Moxie (I like her, she’s funny)

So those are the characters’ names. Well, all the fun ones anyway. I’m still going to talk about Page and what I thought of her, because she’s the main character. And she’s funny. 

Harley Page Stewart

I now know that she is 14! She still sounds like she’s 10, not gonna lie. I’m 14, right? I’m like her age, and I’m… I’m not exactly like this. She seems very immature, and I don’t mean that in a bad way, it just feels like she never aged past ten. She’s just 14 for some reason. Oh, and I literally don’t know what she looks like. I know one thing about her physical appearance. One thing. Basically her hair is beige, and that is a dead giveaway that she’s not exactly from Saudi Arabia because she’s nearly blonde (so she probably has lighter skin) compared to the other people from Saudi that most likely have dark brown hair and tanner skin. Like meeeee. Anyway, Page is Canadian and her parents are from PEI, she likes to make lists and do fun activities with her cousins… and that’s honestly all that I know about her personality? *checking brain for information* Yeah, that’s really all that I know about her. That and the fact that she tends to let her imagine get the best of her which led to her making a list of why WMD was so mysterious. This list included many theories, like how WMD might be an alien or a spy, on the run from the police, or in a witness protection program—it was these things that made Page seem like she was still 10 years old and not a teenager yet. 

WMD

Okay, I’m calling him Warren from now on. Actually wait… no… I’m too used to calling him WMD. So WMD… Warren, is my favorite character in this series, along with Moxie who I’ll get to a little later, and yeah I picked him because he’s actually competent unlike Page? He has common sense while Page tends to let her imagination let her get carried away. I low-key ship them. 

Know what would be amazing? If this was re-written to be a YA summer love story—like The Summer I Turned Pretty? But like… camp. Oh, and on the subject of YA, Page is 14 sooo tEcHnIcAlLy this could be considered a YA novel? Is that what YA means? If the main character fits into the age range for a YA novel does that mean that the book is then YA? But when you look at the writing it’s definitely middle grade. 

So overall I enjoyed this book! It was such a nice read, it was super fun to read about Page again, and all of her little adventures. The only reason I didn’t give it that last half of a star was because I especially love the writing, and there were a few little things that I didn’t like, but that was just personal preference. Also, this is clearly a debut novel, and while this might not have been perfect, I am definitely open to reading more of Ms. Dalvay’s work in the future! This concludes my review of Welcome to Camp Fill-In-The-Blank! I hope you enjoyed it and consider checking it out! 

~Ariela~  

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