SPELLS & SLEEPING BAGS
Sarah Mlynowski
Delacorte Books for Young Readers
Fiction
Hardcover: 0385733879
Paperback: 9780385733885
320 pages

Rachel is ecstatic, and not just because she's off to summer camp along with her sister Miri and her crush Raf. She is over the moon because she’s now a real witch like her mom and sister --- finally. This means she can have anything she desires, right? If she wants a purse, she can zap it up. If she's craving pesto pizza, presto! The only problem is that Rachel has not quite refined her powers (and that's an understatement).

On the bus heading for camp, Miri gets bus-sick and vomits all over her own and Rachel's camp uniforms. So Rachel zaps them up a little cleaning spell. They end up in weird tie-dyed clothes that say "Oodle Wamp Ack" instead of Camp Wood Lake. Oops.

Rachel loves meeting the other campers in bunk 14, but she does not love the idea of sleeping in the top of a set of bunk beds. But her "separate the bunk beds into two single beds" spell actually tears the bunk beds down the middle. Ack. Meanwhile, Rachel begins learning the mystifying customs and traditions of summer camp while obsessing over Raf's tiniest comments and most casual gestures.

Thanks to her own spell mishaps, Rachel now has very few clothes that fit her, including no underpants whatsoever. When she tries for a floating spell during her swimming test, her legs blow up, morphing into big flotation devices. When she tries to zap her hair straight, it stands out from her head, porcupine-style.

While the girls in Rachel's bunk are friendly and cool, the adjoining bunk's girls have turned oddly snarky and competitive. What is going on with them? Will Rachel and Raf ever actually kiss (every time they get close to it, something happens to interrupt them)? Will Miri, stressed by how her bunk-mates treat her, do something drastic?

SPELLS & SLEEPING BAGS is my favorite of the three enjoyable books in this series. There's a little romance, tons of hilarious magical chaos, and some poignant family relationship issues. I actually laughed out loud at some of the situations and jokes, particularly a cleverly-named witching exercise and Rachel's stepmom's care packages. There is even a mystery that I believed I had solved. Thanks to a surprise twist, I guess I'll have to forfeit that 2007 Sherlock Holmes Award

    --- Reviewed by Terry Miller Shannon (terryms2001@yahoo.com)

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