Review: Be Prepared

Title: Be Prepared
Author: Vera Brosgol
Genre: Middle Grade
Publisher: First Second
Source: Borrowed from a friend
Release Date: April 24, 2018
Rating: ★★★★

Goodreads Synopsis:

A gripping and hilarious middle-grade summer camp memoir from the author of Anya’s Ghost.

All Vera wants to do is fit in—but that’s not easy for a Russian girl in the suburbs. Her friends live in fancy houses and their parents can afford to send them to the best summer camps. Vera’s single mother can’t afford that sort of luxury, but there’s one summer camp in her price range—Russian summer camp.

Vera is sure she’s found the one place she can fit in, but camp is far from what she imagined. And nothing could prepare her for all the “cool girl” drama, endless Russian history lessons, and outhouses straight out of nightmares!

Perfect for fans of Raina Telgemeier, Cece Bell, and Victoria Jamieson, Vera Brosgol’s Be Prepared is a funny and relatable middle-grade graphic novel about navigating your own culture, struggling to belong, and the value of true friendship.

Review:

This is a good story about making friends.

Vera learns how to be friends with older and younger kids in this story. When she wanted to be friends with the older kids at camp, she would put down others to make them laugh, or give them things to please them. It wasn’t a real friendship. But when she was friends with the younger kids, they looked up to her, so she was more generous.

I liked that Vera found her own Russian camp to go to, since she couldn’t go to the camps her friends from school attended. She embraced her culture, since they did Russian activities at camp, and they were only allowed to speak Russian at camp.

One thing I didn’t like was when Vera went along with teasing the other kids. I felt that she did that for way too long in the book. Some parts were kind of depressing too, like when one girl lost her guinea pig and when Vera was being teased.

The story was left on a cliffhanger, so I’m curious to see if it will continue.

Author: jilljemmett

Jill lives in Toronto, Canada. She has studied English, Creative Writing, and Publishing. Jill is the creator and content producer of Jill’s Book Blog, where she has published a blog post every day for the last four years, including 5-7 book reviews a week. She can usually be found with her nose in a book. View all posts by jilljemmett

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