Heidi Heckelbeck 8 – Heidi Heckelbeck Goes to Camp!

Wanda Coven's Heidi Heckelbeck Goes to Camp is a short chapter book for 6 year olds about being the odd one out for two whole weeks.

What happens

It's the eighth Heidi Heckelbeck story, and it helps to know one thing going in. Heidi is a witch, secretly, with a Book of Spells and a medallion she keeps in a box under her bed.

She and her best friend Lucy are off to Camp Dakota together. Heidi packs her tap shoes, because she wants to learn tap properly this time. Then she waits until her mum leaves the room and tucks the spell book right down at the bottom of the trunk. Just in case.

The trouble starts in the car park. Jill and Bree, who were at camp with Lucy last summer, take an arm each and skip off with her, and Heidi ends up walking behind the three of them listening to stories about a year she wasn't there for.

After that it's the bed on the wrong side of the cabin, next to the counsellor. The swim test she fails because she can't stop thinking about snapping turtles. The riding lesson where her horse simply won't move. The door that swings shut in her face on the way into lunch.

It's all small stuff, and it's spot on. Anyone who has ever been the third person in a friendship will know exactly how that feels.

Heidi writes to her little brother that the only friends she has at camp are the mosquitoes. Then she gets a better idea. What if she makes Jill and Bree like her?

The spell wants fruit punch, cinnamon sugar, powdered candy from the camp store and the friendship bracelets she plaited in arts and crafts. There's a note in small letters at the bottom of the page. Heidi skips it. (Obviously.)

One thing to say. The left-out feeling goes on for a good stretch before anything gets better, and it's laid on thick. If your child is in the middle of a friendship wobble right now, read it together rather than hand it over. For most six-year-olds it's simply a satisfying story with a witch in it, and the camp detail is great fun.

What to read next

If they want to know about those tap shoes, Heidi Heckelbeck Is Ready to Dance came earlier in the series. That's the one with the school talent show, a pair of shoes found in the attic and a spell she probably shouldn't have used.