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INTERMEDIATE FICTION
Melleby, Nicole , Sass, A.J.

Camp QUILTBAG

352 pp. | Algonquin | March, 2023 | Trade ISBN 9781643752662 $16.99 | Paper ISBN 9781523524020 $7.99 | Ebook ISBN 9781643753669 $11.99
(2) 4-6 Melleby and Sass bring together the middle school–aged protagonists they each created for the 2021 short-story anthology This Is Our Rainbow (co-edited by Melleby and Katherine Locke) in this novel set at a camp for LGBTQ+ youth. Melleby's Abigail (she/her/hers), all but ostracized by her friends since she admitted to a crush on one of their mothers, begs her parents to send her to the camp. Sass's Kai (e/em/eir) attends under protest: eir parents sign em up after a bullying incident. The two newbies form sometimes-bumpy relationships with each other and with the more seasoned campers in a safe but not necessarily awkwardness-free space. There's a heightened awareness (even more than in other settings) that anyone might be romantically interested in anyone else--or might not. There's also, realistically, a wide range of knowledge about and comfort with queer identities among the kids: one of them launches a campaign for a more inclusive camp name ("there's no letter in the QUILTBAG acronym for pansexual kids, plus a lot of others"), while Kai tries to remember what pansexual means. Intersectionality in the differences between campers adds another dimension, especially in the area of religion: Abigail attends Catholic school; Kai is "kind of" Jewish and tentatively learns more about Judaism from another camper. This engaging, gently affirming novel should be valuable to young readers exploring their own identities or curious about those of others.
Reviewer: Shoshana Flax | Horn Book Magazine Issue: March, 2023

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