Through the Looking Glass Children's Book Reviews
Molly Saves the Day: A Summer Story
Illustrator: Nick Backes
Fiction Series
For ages 7 to 12
Pleasant Company, 2000 ISBN: 978-0937295434
Molly and her two best friends Susan and Linda are going to summer camp for the first time. Though they are a little nervous at first the three girls quickly settle in and soon they are having such a wonderful time that the days fairly fly past. Indeed they go by so fast that in no time at all it seems, there are only three days left before it is time to go home once again.
The campers discover that the grand finale for their time at camp is what is called the Color War game. In this game two teams have to try to outwit each other. At first Molly and her friends don?t like the sound of the game that much. They wish that things could go on as before and each girl worries that perhaps they are going to have to face their own private fears as they battle one another in the game. Perhaps they will have to be a little like real soldiers and perhaps they will have to be brave.
When almost their entire team is captured by the ?enemy? Molly and Susan have to make plans and carry them out even though they find themselves having to do things that they are not good at and that frighten them. Molly begins to get a sense of what it might be like to be real soldier as she strategizes and puts her plans into action.
This fifth book in the Molly series will give readers an interesting picture of what a summer camp in the 1940?s was like. They will also see that children did in fact take in what they read in newspapers, heard on the radio, or saw on the newsreels and what they heard did have an impact on how they thought and what they did in their own lives.
