BUNKWORK
As Corrine and I walk back up to the cabin, I ask Corrine what comes next.
“This camp has got to be cleaned up after the winter. We did it before we left last year, but there’s always sweeping and stuff.”
Housework, actually, bunkwork.
We go back to the cabin. I sweep the floor, and Corrine gets the spider webs down.
I look down at a corner of the room. There are all of these tiny brown pellets.
“Corrine, what’s this?” I call her over.
“Mouse turds,” she says.
I look at her, then realize she’s not kidding around.
They really are mouse turds.
I think I’m going to throw up.
I wonder if bats make pellets too.
I feel like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, when she turns to her dog and realizes that she’s far from home.
Well, Toto, I guess we’re not in New Jersey
anymore.
BOOKS BY PAULA DANZIGER
The Cat Ate My Gymsuit
The Divorce Express
It’s an Aardvark-Eat-Turtle World
The Pistachio Prescription
There’s a Bat in Bunk Five
This Place Has No Atmosphere
PUFFIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
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First published in the United States by Delacorte Press, 1980
Published by PaperStar Books, 1998
Published by Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2006
This edition published by Puffin Books,
an imprint of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2014
Copyright © 1980 by Paula Danziger
Introduction copyright © 2014 by Ann M. Martin
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THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE PAPERSTAR EDITION AS FOLLOWS:
Danziger, Paula.
There’s a bat in bunk five.
Summary: On her own for the first time, 14-year-old Marcy tries to cope with the new people and situations she encounters while working as a counselor at an arts camp.
[1. Camping—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.D2394Th [Fic] 80-15581
Puffin Books ISBN: 978-1-101-66584-8
Version_1
To the Weisses—
M. Jerry, Helen, Sharon, Frann, Eileen, and Michael
With love and laughter
Contents
Bunkwork
Books by Paula Danziger
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
A Note from Paula
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Special Excerpt from The Cat Ate My Gymsuit
A NOTE FROM PAULA
The school year was 1977–1978 and I was teaching eighth and ninth graders. Many of my students had come back from summer vacation talking about their experiences at camp.
Camp. It’s the time when kids leave home, meet new people, try out new behavior.
That gave me an idea. Ever since The Cat Ate My Gymsuit was published in 1974, people had been asking me to write a sequel. What if I sent Marcy to camp?
The only problem was that my only experience at camp had been a disaster. (One week after I got there, my mother became camp nurse and brought along my little brother. So much for getting away!)
Help came at the laundromat when I noticed some people washing huge amounts of towels and clothes. I saw from their sweatshirts that they were from Mt. Tremper Lutheran Camp. Camp!!!!! Life was good! They invited me to visit, to take notes, to talk with campers and counselors.
The sequel got written.
CAT. BAT. People said that I should write a third book about Marcy and have her grow up and join the RAT race. I don’t think so!
I’m happy with the two books about Marcy . . . and happy that new generations of readers continue to meet her and go to camp with her.
—Paula Danziger
INTRODUCTION
If a Prince Charming or a Prince Semi-Charming came up to my door and said, “Rosie Wilson, you are the most beautiful, individualistic fourteen-year-old in the universe,” I certainly wouldn’t slam the door in his face.
This is the first line of Paula Danziger’s hilarious and moving It’s an Aardvark-Eat-Turtle World. First lines fascinate me, and this one says a lot about Paula, her stories, and her characters. The author of over thirty titles for young adult readers, Paula was known for capturing her audience with her uncanny ability to tap into teenage psyches—to write realistically and unflinchingly about families, divorce, friendship, first love, insecurity, and injustice, and to do so with a wicked sense of humor. It’s rare for a reader to find herself laughing out loud, then just a few sentences later, searching for tissues in order to wipe away tears. Paula courted difficult, sometimes controversial subjects; her self-effacing characters and her love of humor made her books compelling reading.
Paula herself was as memorable as any character she created. She made friends wherever she went and was passionate about them. Somehow each of us felt as if we were Paula’s best friend. She was flamboyant and flashy. She tied colorful scarves around her head, wore as many oversize rings as possible on her fingers, and shopped with great joy for glittery sneakers and sequined purses. She liked video games and slot machines. She once managed to light one of her fake fingernails on fire. The first time I spent a weekend at her house, she offered me a breakfast of Coke, M&Ms, and Circus Peanuts.
Paula was a marvel of disorganization. I’ve never seen anything like the inside of her purse. It was a jumble of loose bills and coins, receipts, lipstick cases, candy, lint, notebooks, keys. She frequently lost her keys, or thought she had, and a dramatic search would ensue before they were located, surprise, at the bottom of her purse. Her desk was worse, overflowing with larger items.
Yet out of this chaos sprang books that have resonated with readers for decades. Paula’s first book, The Cat Ate My Gymsuit, was published in 1974. Thirteen-year-old Marcy, the protagonist, may wear panty hose, buy records for her stereo, and never have heard of cell phones, but it doesn’t matter because she faces the same issues contemporary kids face:
All my life I’ve thought that I looked like a baby blimp with wire-frame glasses and mousy brown hair. Everyone always said that I’d grow out of it, but I was convinced that I’d become an adolescent blimp with wire-frame glasses, mousy brown hair, and acne.
Marcy’s story continues in There’s a Bat in Bunk Five when she experiences her first love while at summer camp:
This thing with Ted isn’t a crush. . . . What if I let myself start to care and get hurt? I’m not sure I can survive a broken heart. I get hurt so easily anyw
ay, so I’ve never let myself get too close to a guy, not that there have been that many opportunities. I’m scared. What if it turns into a real relationship and it’s as bad as my parents’ marriage?
In The Pistachio Prescription Paula tackles divorce as Cassie Stephens’s family begins to crumble. In later books, other characters face the aftermath of divorce, but this story chronicles the Stephenses’ slide from dysfunctional, a theme Paula visits often, to separation. In a scene from the beginning of the book, Cassie visits her friend Vicki:
We sit down with her parents. Nobody fights at the Norton house. At least not while I’m there. Vicki says that they do fight sometimes, but that it’s psychologically healthy to air feelings honestly. I don’t know if my family does it honestly, but if awards were given on the basis of yelling, we’d win the Mental Health Award of the century. I guess we’d probably be disqualified, though, on the basis of lack of sanity.
I smiled when I read that paragraph. But later the tone of the story changes:
[My father] walks over. “Cassie, I’m sorry it didn’t work out. I guess your mother’s right. There’s no use pretending we can get along. It’s over and that’s all there is to it.”
That’s all.
As simple as that.
Three kids.
A broken-up family.
Yet the ending is hopeful. Cassie realizes her family may not be the one she wishes for, but that she’ll survive.
Rearrange the letters in the word PARENTS and you get the word ENTRAPS. This’s how The Divorce Express begins. Four years after the publication of The Pistachio Prescription Paula writes about Phoebe, who shuttles between her father’s home in Woodstock, New York, and her mother’s home in New York City. Travel is the least of Phoebe’s concerns, though. Now her parents are seeing other people:
Maybe I’m a prude, but I don’t like to think about my parents having sex with anyone but each other.
Phoebe analyzes the stages parents go through when they get divorced:
. . . the fighting and anger—then the distance—and making me feel caught in the middle. After the divorce they try to be “civilized.” I know that there were even times that they missed each other. I know for a fact that after the divorce they even slept with each other once in a while. It was confusing. Now they act like people who have a past history together, but only a future of knowing each other because of me.
By the end of The Divorce Express, Phoebe’s father has fallen in love with the mother of Rosie, Phoebe’s new best friend, and their story continues in It’s an Aardvark-Eat-Turtle World, told from Rosie’s point of view. All Rosie wants is a happy family, but Phoebe doesn’t make that easy. Furthermore, Rosie, who’s biracial, faces issues that Phoebe can’t fathom, and once again, Paula writes candidly about a sensitive subject, illustrated in this scene when Rosie goes on a date with a boy who’s white:
While we look at each other, some guy comes up and says with hate, “Why don’t you stick to your own kind?”
I can’t believe it.
He repeats what he’s just said.
Jason turns to him. “We are the same kind—human. You’re the one who isn’t our kind. You’re scum.”
A year later, Paula’s next book, This Place Has No Atmosphere, was published and the setting is, of all places, the moon in 2057—a bold departure for Paula, who made the colony on the moon seem real and believable, and who drew us into the life of Aurora Williams on the first page. The book feels futuristic indeed, but Aurora’s story of adjusting to a move and finding a serious boyfriend is timeless.
Paula died in 2004, but her stories have already been passed from one generation of passionate fans to another. Her many best friends miss her, but I like to think of the hope with which she ends her books. She wrote great last lines, too. If you take the letters in the word DIVORCES and rearrange them, they spell DISCOVER.
Thank you, Paula, for showing us captivating beginnings, hopeful endings, and in between, how to look at life with laughter.
CHAPTER 1
If I iron or sew one more name tag on my stuff, I’m going to scream. There are name tags on my jeans, shorts, shirts, nightgowns, pajamas, sheets, pillowcases, sleeping bag, socks, sweaters, sweat shirts, underwear, and jackets. My mother’s having me put adhesive-tape labels on my comb, brush, and flashlight. There’s indelible ink on my fingers from putting my name on my sneakers. She’ll probably make me carve my name in the soap bars and on my eyeglass frames.
“Marcy, can’t I help you with anything?” My mother sticks her head into my room.
“No thanks. I can do it myself,” I say for the eighty-millionth time.
She walks in. “Here. I addressed some envelopes for you with our address and put stamps on them. That’ll make it easier for you to keep in touch.”
“Look, I promise, I’ll write. You didn’t have to do that.” Sometimes they act as if I’m three years old, instead of fourteen and eleven twelfths.
She puts the stationery in my suitcase. “It’s the first time you’ve ever been away for such a long period of time. I’m going to miss you.”
I continue to iron. I know I’m going to miss her too, but I really want to get away, be on my own. I really want to get out of the house since I’m always kind of tense in it.
She keeps right on talking. “I wish I’d had the chance to go away to camp when I was your age. You’re so lucky, being part of a creative arts camp, with Ms. Finney as the director.”
I nod. I’ve thought about little else since I got the letter from Ms. Finney asking if I’d like to fill a last-minute vacancy and be a counselor-in-training, a CIT, at the camp. I’ve missed her so much. She’s the best teacher I ever had, one of the few who really cared about kids. She quit after a big fight with the school administration. We wrote for a while, but I hadn’t heard from her for months. Then one day I came home and there was this letter asking if I’d like to work on the camp newspaper and assist in the creative writing program. I was in shock, so excited I thought I’d die of joy. Overwhelmed.
My father, however, was underwhelmed. It took a long time to convince him I should go. He’s always afraid I’m going to be too radical or something. He hated Ms. Finney when she was my teacher. Finally my mother and I convinced him it would look good on my college applications, and it would be better to go than to sit around the house all summer, bored out of my mind.
My mother sits on my bed. “My little girl, going away for the entire summer. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
“Maybe you and Dad won’t argue so much with me gone. Isn’t he always saying you two’d never fight if it weren’t for me?”
She sighs. “Marcy, come on. Let up a little. He’s had a rough time lately. He’s been trying since we all went for counseling. You’re the one who won’t give him a chance. Why don’t you try to forget the past and live in the present?”
“He wasn’t trying last night when he screamed at me for coming in late. That’s not the past, is it?”
She sighs again. If they ever hold an Olympics sighing marathon, my mother’d win, lungs down. “He wouldn’t yell if he didn’t love you. It’s just his way. He was very worried. Last night, after we went to bed, he told me he’ll miss you.”
“Sure.” I refuse to listen to the same thing one more time. “If he loved me, he could find better ways to show it. Why did he say the things he did about how I’d be good comic relief for the campers and how I think ‘taking a hike’ means running out in the middle of an argument.”
“Marcy, you’re being a bit unfair. He thinks of camps as places for sports, being outdoors. You know those activities aren’t high on your list of favorite things.” She starts to repack my suitcase, neatening it up. “He just likes to tease. That’s the way he tries to show affection. You have no sense of perspective about him. There’s nothing he can do that’s right in your eyes. You expect perfection from people.”
“Well, so does he. How come when I bring home a test with a grade
of ninety-seven, he asks what happened to the other three points instead of saying I did well?”
“You should try to understand him before it’s too late and you feel sorry.”
The same old story. Now I’m supposed to feel guilty.
Ever since my father had a heart attack when school began this year, I get scared he’s going to die. Sometimes I wish he were dead, I hate him so much. But there’s also a part of me that really does love him. My mother should only know how many nights I stay up late worrying and trying to concentrate on keeping him alive.
My mother gets up. “I’m going downstairs now. If you need anything, call.”
After she leaves, I continue to iron.
I hate ironing almost as much as I hate taking gym, and that’s a lot. Last year I had to take two gym classes to fulfill requirements and make up the one I’d flunked. Ironing and gym should be outlawed. Once my mother began working, we all had to chip in and help out more in the house. The words “permanent press” took on a whole new meaning in my life after that.
I wish I were already at camp. Maybe I can get enough experience there so I can become an editor on the school paper, instead of just a reporter. Then I can get into a good college, study literature, live my own life, and become a writer. I don’t care if my father says most writers don’t make enough money to support themselves. I want to be a writer anyway.
And I have a goal for camp, a major goal. This summer, I’ve decided, I’m going to try to be a grown-up, so I’ll be able to take care of myself. There’s not much that happens that’s really earth shattering when you’re my age. You’ve just got to go on living, trying to get through every day. If my life were a novel, it would be one without much plot, just character development. So what I really want to do is develop my character, to try to grow up so that when I’m an adult, I’ll be ready for anything.
There’s a knock on my door. “Marcy, it’s me. Stuart. I want to come in.”
He opens the door after I say it’s all right. My little brother’s eight years old, and he still looks like a baby. At least he’s gotten over his abnormal fixation with Wolf, a teddy bear he used to fill with orange pits. Now he’s got this thing about becoming a football player. He wears his football helmet all the time, even to bed. I hope that someone invents a shampoo that can penetrate plastic before his head begins to fungus.
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