December 4, 2023
Phoenny Fang looks forward to Squee—a Chinese heritage summer camp—every year. As senior campers, she and her friends—the Squad—plan to make the most of their final experience. But things go awry from the start when the Squad is broken up due to an influx of new, unenthused campers. Phee tries to be as welcoming as possible, but in attempting to befriend her group members, she finds herself butting heads with McKenna, who is irritated by Phee’s probing personal questions. This new group doesn’t take to martial arts, language lessons, and other Chinese cultural activities as easily as the Squad and, upon learning that they’re all adoptees, Phee and the rest of Squee’s senior campers shift their perspectives. Over the next two weeks, Phee experiences transformative moments and first crushes, and her love for her friends and community deepens. With light prose and even pacing, Wang (The Many Meanings of Meilan) relays themes of identity, belonging, and acceptance, deftly communicating the feelings of both the senior campers and Squee’s newest members without minimizing their plights. An author’s note speaking to Wang’s own experience at a camp like Squee as well as adoptee resources conclude. Ages 8–12.
Starred review from January 15, 2024
After surviving the loneliness of seventh grade, Phoenix can't wait to be with her favorite people in her happy place just one last time, before she's too old. SCCWEE, or Summertime Chinese Culture, Wellness, and Enrichment Experience, is Phoenny's sanctuary. She loves all the fun camp traditions and the heritage classes, like Chinese rice dough sculpting and ribbon dancing. But her plans for a perfect time are interrupted by the arrival of new girls who don't share her positive attitude toward camp and Chinese culture, which leaves Phoenny feeling confused and threatened. Plus, she's competing with one of them for the attention of the same boy. Thankfully, Phoenny has her passion for sewing clothes to help her deal with the stress. Once she learns that the new girls are transracial adoptees from white families and face their own unique set of challenges, Phoenny opens up, and a virtuous cycle of vulnerability, empathy, and acceptance ensues. When trolls post racist comments on the camp's social media, the campers use their joyful creativity to resist the fear and hate. Through careful research and interviews, Wang has crafted a narrative that reflects many transracial adoptees' feelings and experiences. The believable dialogue questions and explores deeply held beliefs about culture. Phoenny's lovingly detailed, introspective viewpoint will positively influence readers' awareness of their own emotional and cultural landscapes. Blending moxie and grace, this novel is a worthy guide through cultural expansiveness and summer camp antics and angst. (author's note) (Fiction. 8-13)
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February 9, 2024
Grades 5-8 Phee can't wait to be reunited with her besties ("the Squad") for their last year of summer camp, lovingly called Squee after its acronym, SCCWEE (Summertime Chinese Culture, Wellness, and Enrichment Experience). But Phee, who holds tradition and routine near to her heart, is thrown for a loop when five new girls join, forcing the Squad to break into two separate groups for all their camp activities. What's more, the new girls don't even seem to want to be there. While Phee struggles with these changes, she also grapples with confusing signals from the cute new counselor-in-training and a stressful atmosphere caused by internet trolls targeting Squee with anti-Asian hate messages on social media. Wang, whose Watercress (2021) received a Newbery Honor, takes on a lot here. Squee is a place where important lessons are taught and learned, and that's what this book feels like, as well. The number of traditional Chinese arts, crafts, sports, and mini language tutorials come at the reader fast--as do the sheer number of characters--at the risk of overwhelming them with details and overshadowing the plot. None of this is to say that these aren't lessons worth learning, and Wang spends a lot of time examining the complexity of being bicultural and how that experience can look and feel very different from one person to the next. Best for classroom use when it can be paired with extension activities or broader lessons on Chinese culture.
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March 29, 2024
Gr 4-8-After a lonely seventh grade year due to her friend group breaking up, Phoenny Fang is looking forward to her summer at Squee, otherwise known as the Summertime Chinese Culture, Wellness, and Enrichment Experience. Phoenny and her summer camp friends are excited to experience the camp traditions as senior campers this year-until their group, the Squad, is split up to include a new group of campers. At first Phoenny tries to be friendly to the new members, sharing everything she loves, but they aren't as interested in traditional Chinese activities. The new campers are facing their own set of challenges as adoptees, and with the fact that some of Phoenny's favorite parts of camp make them feel excluded. This knowledge changes the perspective of the senior Squee campers, and over the next few weeks, themes of identity, belonging and acceptance surface as both new and returning campers explore what it means to be Chinese American. An author's note shares the experience of Wang's family with cultural heritage camp as well as resources about the adoptee experience. VERDICT A fun summer camp coming-of-age story for all students, but especially those traversing issues of cross-cultural identity.-Sarah Polace
Copyright 2024 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
May 1, 2024
Phoenny, a thirteen-year-old Chinese American girl, is ecstatic to return to SCCWEE (Summertime Chinese Culture, Wellness, and Enrichment Experience) -- Camp Squee for short. It is sure to be another awesome summer with her best friends, the Squad. However, new (and initially unfriendly) campers arrive who aren't as familiar with Chinese language and culture as the Squad is; their extra numbers cause the friends to be split into different groups. Suddenly, Phee is unsure about the summer, even as she unpacks her sewing machine and shares handmade, eye-catching costumes with her friends. Nightly camper meetings lead to honest and transformative conversations about what it means to be Chinese; for example, some newcomers are adoptees living in white families with different perspectives on identity and culture. Then, internet trolls post nasty social media comments that threaten the camp, and Phee feels fragile and afraid. Wang's tightly woven plotting and lively dialogue paint a rich portrait of the ups and downs of middle school friendships, social awkwardness, and a desperate desire to belong. Add in a few crushes, lots of hilarious camp hijinks, and an ingenious solution to the troll problem, and you have an excellent companion to Kelly Yang's Front Desk series (Front Desk, rev. 7/18, and sequels) and Grace Lin's Pacy Lin series (The Year of the Dog, rev. 3/06, and sequels). J. Elizabeth Mills
(Copyright 2024 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)
January 1, 2024
Phoenny, a thirteen-year-old Chinese American girl, is ecstatic to return to SCCWEE (Summertime Chinese Culture, Wellness, and Enrichment Experience) -- Camp Squee for short. It is sure to be another awesome summer with her best friends, the Squad. However, new (and initially unfriendly) campers arrive who aren't as familiar with Chinese language and culture as the Squad is; their extra numbers cause the friends to be split into different groups. Suddenly, Phee is unsure about the summer, even as she unpacks her sewing machine and shares handmade, eye-catching costumes with her friends. Nightly camper meetings lead to honest and transformative conversations about what it means to be Chinese; for example, some newcomers are adoptees living in white families with different perspectives on identity and culture. Then, internet trolls post nasty social media comments that threaten the camp, and Phee feels fragile and afraid. Wang's tightly woven plotting and lively dialogue paint a rich portrait of the ups and downs of middle school friendships, social awkwardness, and a desperate desire to belong. Add in a few crushes, lots of hilarious camp hijinks, and an ingenious solution to the troll problem, and you have an excellent companion to Kelly Yang's Front Desk series (Front Desk, rev. 7/18, and sequels) and Grace Lin's Pacy Lin series (The Year of the Dog, rev. 3/06, and sequels).
(Copyright 2024 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)