KidLit Forum

...and don't forget about Summer's bulimia....the fact that she lost more weight than any other girl in the camp, just to go 'home' a week before the camp was over, an when I say "home", I mean the reability center to help her recover the "inside forced body/stomach"

...but what I enjoyed most in this story was the love story between Cam and Jesse...their escapade during the visiting day just for dinner...as a real date for each of them...the deer incident, Cam felt sorry for...the envy on Evie because she had fun on her tennis camp, and fell in love for Seth, just to realize he only wanted to sleep with her...actually this was the moment when Cam started to feel great and wrote her back to tell her about Jesse...and the end was even better when she saw how much she put on weight...it makes me wonder about their real friendship...of course in the end they had a lot in common and they were much more motivated to loise weight or at least to keep fit, and they actually ran together and even thought of going back to the Calliope Camp the following year together. And of course if she goes, Jesse will too.

Although at first she decided to accept her parents proposal to go to that camp only because they promissed her a new laptop and a pet, after all she's been through she never thought that instead of loosing weight, she'll lose three best friends, but the event with Faith worry for Brandy, determined her to choose a three leg dog Buddy and rename him Brandy, I think to remind herself about the memorable moments spent in the camp...

If we think a bit about the story...it's a 1st person narrative from the point of view of its main character Cam...we only know how things work through her eyes...I think it would have been quite interesting to have more perspectives of the same story, through the eyes of each girl there, or at least through the eyes of Jesse...to see how and what he thinks about Cam and find more things about the boys' bunk and what happens there too...

oh...and don't forget about the camp newspaper that should motivate children to lose weight...and the mocking quizz Cam and Jesse published...and when they were called by Mel into his office...they thought they were caught for their escape dinner...Cam had never done things wrong and then she was extremely afraid that she would be kicked out, especially that then her parents visited her and everything seemed to look ok.

The story snows us that children have different problems they compensate with eating, and different things ca motivate them lose weight and came back to their normal life...but we don't know anything about Summer, or what happened to her, not even the nutritionist, who kept in touch with all the children in the camp, knew anything about her...I wonder why???I think the story has an open end for her and let us imagine what could have really happened to her...

This story is interesting to be observed from various points of view. "I arrive at camp seminauseous from the bus ride and nearly starving. Almost three hours, and the “snack” was one medium-sized banana and a bottle of water. It’s almost lunchtime and after we’re shown to our bunks, we’ll get to eat our first meal at Camp Calliope, which some of the kids on the bus are already calling Camp Calipers because we know they’ll be using those plierlike instruments that pinch your fat to measure ours. " Starting with this quote I want to say that body image is important in our society and for this cause a series of stereotypes follow the persons who don't correspond the standards. most of the teenagers aged 16 went to this fat camp in order to lose weight. The reason for doing this is the pressure from social groups, the need of being accepted by the others, the pressure coming from parents as is the case with Cam Philipps. It is not easy to be fat in a world who tries to be perfect and control the weight as much as possible. What if some persons inherit at born generous body shape and is not their fault? The effort to be fit and have a nice body shape is doubled. Not only that psychologically speaking some of these persons might think they are ugly, and might isolate themselves. Or on the contrary some of the teenagers might try to lose weight just to see how they feel. If something changes or not radically. What is important and what impressed me the most was that the majority of persons from the fat camp were happy to repeat the summer experience and they were trying to keep a diet more or less. It is important to look good but more important is to be healthy. Extra pounds are not good neither for self esteem nor for health.

I think that the story is very funny, especially at the beginning when she says that she is happy that she lives in an Upper East Side Manhattan because of two reasons: The first reason is the bacon avocado Swiss cheeseburger and the second reason is the waiter who who works there. She says that he looks like Chad Michael Murray. She went to that fat camp because her parents told her to go, and she accepted because they swore to her that they would buy her a new laptop and a dog. This was the only reason why she accepted this challenge. She did not tell the other people where she was going to spend the summer, she told them that she was going to spend it in a camp, she did not specify in what kind of camp. Her best friend Evie knew where she was going to go but our protagonist was sure that Evie would not tell anyone about her secret. These two girls are very good friends even if they are not the same: Cam is fat and Evie is slim but they do not care about these differences, they are like sisters. In a way this novel is a little bit sad especially in the first chapter when she said that she could never wear nice clothes. For a girl this can be devastating because all the girls want to be pretty, to have an amazing body. But however Cam does not seem to be that devastated, of course I think she is a bit sad but she is not devastated.

Camp Calliope, a prison camp for the overweight. That's where Cam Phillips' parents have shipped her off to eat controlled portions, endure rigorous exercise, and sleep in a bunk full of girls who'd rather exchange recipes than ghost stories and gossip,and etc......a very unfriedly place for a girl like Cam.

This is a book that present us a very actual problem, a problem of many teenagers and a generally problem of the world, in our society.We see all the time so many examples of children like Cam, or anorexics.It is very hard to be overweight or anorexic because the society judge you for the way you look.Society has very wrong models for teenagers, these persons seem to look perfect,even they have many defects in reality.Teenagers take this very wrong, because they say,if i do not look like them I do not exist or I am nobody if I do not look perfect.We have to accept us as we are,it is not wrong to try to make things better but not with any price.....

This story isn't quite what I expected becouse of the few scenes that I wouldn't want to be in this book. For instance the girls and the boys are fat......but the girls want some "good-looking" boys not fat ones, the same goes for the boys they too want slim girls not fat ones. Here while they are discriminated by other people they discriminate one another too, this was too "rough" because in real life I have not met yet fat people to discriminate other fat people.

I am very pleased about the messages of this book which sound like slogans to me:
Be happy with your own body! or
Be thankful for what you`ve got or what you are!
The word which crossed my mind after reading Fat Camp was SLENDERNESS which, obviously is associated with happiness, youthness and social acceptabilty.The conclusion is firm: Fat Camp was a blessing for Cam Phillips because at the end of those eight weeks she lost weight(the most important reason she was sent for to the Camp Calliope) and she had so much fun, adventure and the most significant thing is that Cam realized that LOOKS is not everything what matters in this life.