Summer on the Short Bus

Gr 8 Up—Rich, spoiled, and entitled, the last thing 17-year-old Constance, aka Cricket, wants to do is work as a counselor at a special needs summer camp. She had been planning on spending her vacation in Maui with best friend Katie, but after the ill-advised party she hosted at the riding stables, her furious dad ships her off to Camp I Can for a two-week stint as a counselor. Cricket spends the first part of her stay scheming escape routes while trying to have as little to do as possible with the campers, who, for the most part, have Down syndrome and cerebral palsy. On the bright side, there is fellow counselor Quinn, a Zac Efron doppelgänger, who is as nice as he is cute. Over the course of two very bumpy weeks, Cricket develops an appreciation for the camp and its denizens and matures a great deal—largely due to Quinn's positive influence. The special needs kids are not particularly well-developed characters, although they are endearing and quirky—and two weeks is perhaps an unrealistic amount of time for the protagonist's personality transformation. Despite this, the novel is heartwarming and funny, mainly because of Cricket's scathingly honest politically incorrect internal and external dialogue. Highly entertaining—this book will appeal to reluctant readers.—Ragan O'Malley, Saint Ann's School, Brooklyn, NY