Fighting the Droop: Slept Away
Happy Summer, everyone! For once, New York One’s terribly wrong 10-day forecast was a good thing, right?
So, I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted, and some people have e-mailed me, wondering A) if I simply stopped writing for the blog or B) had my mom shipped me off to the woods these past few weeks.
Well, no on both counts, but if I could do the latter all over again, this time I’d do it with a smile.
While I was away, however, Julie Kraut’s Slept Away dragged me down Memory Lane’s dirty, rocky path. I was once again forced to weigh the leftover camp mush I could never finish at mealtime; I relived that moment in group swim when I learned what else to shave aside from legs and pits; and I was reintroduced to the strangeness of real life out-of-towners. All this, I remembered with a smile.
But for Slept Away‘s Laney Parker, a summer at Camp Timber Trails is nothing to smile about.
Laney’s a city-girl at heart … and not just any city girl: She’s a New York City girl, living a life a bit more tame than Gossip Girl, but complete with friends who are just as parentally unsupervised. Hoping to beat her vegan mom to the punch when it comes to planning her summer, Laney has daydreams of a fabulous fashion internship and renting an apartment in midtown for the summer. But before Laney can make her dream a reality, her mom leaps to rid herself of classic urban parent guilt (that tug-at-the-conscience which comes from not providing your child with enough trees in his or her life) and sends her daughter for three months to sleep away camp.
Slept Away is one instance where the parent/child silent treatment should seriously be reconsidered; with the speed of light, Laney is sulking in her log cabin with triplet Mean Girls, no cell phone, and a tacky neon swimsuit for group swim (If you’re not talking to your mom, you can’t snag the credit card). *Gasp! However will Laney survive?!
Better yet, will Laney actually want to leave at summer’s end?
Slept Away comes out this week and is a read that brings all the excitement of summer with only a touch of puberty’s torture. Also the co-author of Hot Mess, another YA summertime saga, Kraut has mastered the art of angst and is fluid in teen-speak. Count how many pop culture references you actually “get.”
Check out the Slept Away buzz and read what author Julie Kraut had to say in her Neighborbee Author Q&A about the trials of summer camp, herself at age 15, and her female heroes …
Q&A with Slept Away Author, Julie Kraut
RG: How did this story come about?
JK: Because I still want a spot at the Thanksgiving dinner table, I won’t go into too much detail about this, but during a recent trip home, I found myself yelling down the stairs, “I swear I’m like the only person in this family who wears pants on a regular basis.” And then I thought to myself, “What a ridiculous thing to say. I want the main character in my next book to say that.” And that really was the little kernel of the idea that started the book. I outlined my ideas for Laney and her mother and not-at-all-step-father and made sure that the two adults never wore pants.
After I laid out this little trifecta of pantsless family dysfunction, it felt like the perfect set up for sending Laney to camp. After ten years (No wait, more—ah, when did I get this old?) of reminiscing about my summers at camp, I was ready to step back and somehow turn my collection of memories into a story. While Slept Away isn’t the love letter to sleep away camp I’d write if I were telling my own story, writing the book still allowed me to rehash many of my summer experiences and had the added bonus of prompting me to Facebook stalk some of my former camp friends and get in touch.
RG: What were your cringe-worthy moments at camp?
JK: There are so many cringe-worthy moments, it’s hard to pick just one. I’d have to say that one of my tops was when I got disciplined for mooning other campers while they were sleeping. I have no answers as to why otherwise normal twelve-year-old girls would ban together and moon their sleeping peers, but I do have an answer as to how humiliating it is to defend such behavior to the camp director’s wife. Answer: Very.
RG: Would you send your daughter to summer camp?
JK: For future Google-curious blind dates, I do not have a daughter…or a son. But, if I did or do, I would send her to camp if she wanted to go. I adored my summers at camp and would love for my daughter to have similar experiences.
RG: Tell me about your endless Generation Y (or is it Z?) pop culture references and how you jammed so many in so few pages! Do they flow off the tongue for you?
JK: Endless? Really? You mean that in a good way, right?
RG: Of course I mean that in a good way!
JK: Yeah, I guess those kind of references come naturally to me. I keep up on pop culture for the most part, so the info is already on the tip of my fingers when I’m writing.
RG: How would you describe yourself at age 15?
JK: The loud, driven girl with the smart mouth. Not a lot has changed in the past decade, I guess. At least I can drive on the highway now.
RG: What insights did you come to about yourself at age 15 while writing this book?
JK: While I was doing a lot of reminiscing about summer camp during the writing process, I wasn’t digging too deeply into myself at age 15. But, here’s one memory that came back to me while reflecting on my summers and now I understand it differently than I did then.
I was on a teen tour and one of the cool girls on the bus, Laurie, came up to me and said, “Julie, you’d be really pretty if you tried.” At the time, I took this as a compliment. Thinking back on it though, maybe Laurie didn’t have the best intentions when she said that. Plus, I took out my retainer for dress-up days. What more trying did she want?
RG: Your previous novel Hot Mess was a group effort. How was your experience writing this novel alone? Any challenges?
JK: There definitely were times when I missed Shallon, my co-author from Hot Mess. I’d find myself inserting comments like “Shall, funny or too gross? Or both?” And then I’d realize that I wasn’t sending the manuscript to Shallon, so I’d have to make the call myself. (For the most part, I decided there’s no such thing as too gross.)
RG: Laney seems to start out with a girl crush on Sylvie. Who are your girl crushes and/or sheroes (and they can be people you know and/or don’t know)?
JK: A small sampling from my stable of girl crushes:
Chelsea Handler, Jennifer Weiner, Blake Lively, Hilary Clinton, Sarah Haskins, Padma Lakshmi, Mom, Elizabeth Gilbert, Mindy Kaling, Kathy Griffin, and Kate Christensen.
Tags:Julie Kraut, Slept Away, summer camp, Young adult
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