Amelia Bedelia Makes a Splash

Herman Parish's Amelia Bedelia Makes a Splash is a funny summer camp story for 6 year olds about a girl who takes every word exactly as it's said.

What happens

Amelia Bedelia had her summer all planned. Then her mum shares some news over dinner. The camp she went to as a girl, Camp Echo Woods, is about to close for good, and a place has come up for this last summer. Amelia Bedelia is going. For eight whole weeks!

She's not happy about it (she's actually furious). So her parents make a deal. They'll visit at the halfway point, and if she still hates it, she can come home.

Then, right at the edge of town, the bus stops for one more camper. A tall girl called Alice sits down next to her, and suddenly things look up. There's a cabin of new girls whose names all start with A, a counsellor called Peggy who sings everyone awake, fire lighting with flint and steel, and a night lying out under the Milky Way.

And of course there are mix-ups. Amelia Bedelia hears everything literally. When the camp owner, Mrs. Evans, mentions her late husband, Amelia Bedelia offers to save him a plate of spaghetti in case he turns up. And when she's asked for a splash of juice at dinner, well, you can probably guess where the title comes from.

This is a proper chapter book, with jokes on nearly every page. Half the fun is spotting each misunderstanding before the grown-ups do. Mrs. Evans talks in old sayings (heebie-jeebies, collywobbles, the life of Riley), so for once Amelia Bedelia isn't the only one who's confused.

Underneath the jokes there's a lovely thread about homesickness. Amelia Bedelia makes a mark on her cabin wall for every day that passes. Anyone who's been nervous about a sleepover or a school trip will understand. Watching her slowly start to love the place she didn't want to go is really sweet.

It's American, so there are a few words that might need a quick explanation, like s'mores and bunks and the camp songs. None of it gets in the way.

What to read next

If they fall for Alice as much as Amelia Bedelia does, Amelia Bedelia Digs In takes the two friends to the seaside together, with surfboards, a pirate ship in the middle of a roundabout and her cousin Jason.