By Susan Kim, Laurence Klavan & Faith Erin Hicks, coloured by Hilary Sycamore & Sky Blue Ink (First Second)
ISBN: 978-1-59643-366-3
When I was a kid comics were cheap, plentiful and published in cognitive strands: Pre-school stuff read to you, kindergarten magazines read with someone, “Juvenile†stories for boys and girls together and “Post-juvenile†material you bought for yourself, generally divided by both genre and gender (although that’s not a consequence of old fashioned parochial prejudice these days, but more a sales-sensitive concern when getting simply boys to read anything at all is a tricky problem…).
Irrespective of quality, quantity or historical significance, that long-gone wealth and riot of affordable personal and private entertainment taught kids of all ages how to absorb and enjoy illustrated narratives, but although I can still lay claim to premature juvenility most days, in latter times the sheer cost of producing comics items have all but killed the market. If younger kids read printed comics at all these days it’s almost certainly as graphic novels.
So it’s a good thing that there are so many good ones around and – just like the good old days – separated into bands for kids of differing ages, temperaments, interests and cognitive abilities.
A sterling case in point is this moody, paranoiac fantasy chiller by writers Susan Kim and Laurence Klavan (more usually known as kids’ TV scripter and novelist as well as playwrights), beguilingly interpreted by cartoonist and pictorial tale-teller Faith Erin Hicks, which compellingly addresses children’s issues of parental pressure, self-worth and achievement whilst relating a rollicking rollercoaster scary story…
In the deep woods two kids from a Summer Camp are undertaking an orienteering exercise when one of them is taken ill. One minute Clerkson is his usual obnoxious self and then he’s having a fit, choking, and coughing up feathers…
Soon after in New Jersey, Jenna Chun is still disappointing her go-getting doctor parents with her useless obsession about art, and over in Queens, New York, slacker Lucas Meyer is also a problem for his mother. Stealing cars, goofing off and generally wasting everybody’s time, he’s certainly destined for jail, just like his dad…
However things change radically when mysterious distinguished gentlemen turn up and offer both families a last-minute place for their problem children at Camp Fielding: America’s most successful educational institution for hot-housing failing kids and difficult “late bloomersâ€. Some all-expenses-paid places have suddenly become vacant, but if the parents want to guarantee that their problem children will grow into successful, contributing citizens one day they must start them the very next day…
Set in isolated woodlands the camp doesn’t seem that different from other Summer catch-up boarding schools but there are a few oddities. No electronic devices, cellphones or games, no outside food  – and the dorm rooms are filthy. There are no lessons or teaching, just activities you can join if you want to, regular time-trials to solve a giant maze in the middle of the compound and, strangest of all for a specialist educational centre, the kids seem to be the usual mix of morons, geeks and bullies, some of whom suddenly become brilliant…
Lucas quickly makes a friend in perennial victim Dwayne, but when the new kid meets fellow late-starter Jenna it’s a case of mutual hate at first sight…
That soon passes as Dwayne and a friendly girl named Sherry clue them in to the lay of the land; which kids to avoid, Cabins Three and Six where the genius boys and girls sleep, and the cafeteria with its nauseating beige and grey goo-food, bizarre nutritional regime and ice cream-based reward system.
Thanks to disgust, stubbornness, ill-grace, Jenna’s first period and Dwayne’s illicit stash of cash, the kids manage to survive without eating much of the goo, whilst their attention is frequently diverted by a range of odd events: strange lights and sounds in the woods, personality and intellect changes in some of the kids, odd lesions and growths on others, and Jenna even finds a strange featherless dead bird behind one of the cabins…
After a night in the woods (somehow nobody noticed she was missing), Jenna makes a map of the area and Lucas decides to use it to run away – at least as far as the nearest fast-food diner. Accompanied by Dwayne and Jenna they set off and discover a secret lab in the woods, where more kids are locked in. Their faces are grossly malformed and they are spitting out feathers. One of them is the presumed flunked-out-and-sent-home Sherry…
Caught and hauled up before Director Fielding, the kids play dumb and are talked out of quitting camp and further disappointing their parents. But whilst eating Pizzas stolen from theCampCounsellors’ regular takeaway deliveries, the trio compare notes and theories, theorising that Fielding is covering up a disease outbreak in hisCampCash-cow.
The boys organise the other kids in their hut to attempt a mass breakout, but in Jenna’s cabin it’s too late: all the other girls have become smart and snarky, cackling at her like crows…
That night Lucas wakes from a disturbing dream about Jenna, and whilst cleaning his shorts in the sink spies two of the counsellors secretly injecting all the sleeping boys with a mystery drug. Next morning before he can tell anyone he realises how much smarter they have all become after the regular maze-run – even Dwayne…
Terrified and using his old bad-boy skills, Lucas hotwires a car and drives off with Jenna but they are quickly caught and returned, just in time for Parents’ Day. Again their punishment is negligible and, after stuffing themselves on the event’s catered food, the pair confront Fielding who surprisingly admits that they were right…
There is a medical emergency amongst the children and unless they also take the vaccine which the staff have been secretly dosing their classmates with, Jenna and Lucas could die horribly, just like Sherry…
Moreover, a side-effect of the necessary drug will increase their intelligence…
Complying with the inevitable Jenna and Lucas take their medicine, and with their intellects rapidly expanding, the still-suspicious kids spy on Fielding and his crew, only to discover the terrible truth: the Director is in league with extraterrestrials, using dumb kids as hosts for alien avian spawn!
Even worse, the conspiracy reaches high up into government and the exploited children’s ambitious parents were in on it from the start…
Something is different however: even with the embryos growing in their heads Lucas and Jenna are still resisting the change-over, still basically themselves, and with time running out, their intelligence increasing every minute and their feelings for each other growing too, they hatch a desperate last-minute plan to destroy the infestation and save all the implanted kids, even if their parents won’t…
Dark, seditious and creepily effective, this is a thriller with a bark and a bite that will satisfy the most demanding teen reader or aged savant, rendered in a loose and beguiling manner that easily combines innocent charm with clinical precision.
Text © 2010 Susan Kim and Laurence Klavan. Illustrations © 2010 FaithErinHicks. All rights reserved.