A must-read for all girls (and boys, parents, and everyone else, but first of all girls)! A book about growing up, puberty, and boy, I wish I had this book when I was younger.

I already tried this book some months ago when I got accepted for an e-arc on Netgalley. Sadly, the format didn’t work out for me as it kept crashing my tablet/my pc programs. So I vowed to buy the book as soon as I could when it came out.

This is such an important and also very fun book. Because not only does it talk about a topic that is important to girls, but it also does it in a fun way. Namely with the whole camp and Bunk 9 stuff. Most of the book is about puberty, but we also see bits of the camp, they tell us about counsellors, about the layout at the camp, about the food, friendship, who snores, make comments about people going naked to check stuff (and not to do that), and about tons of other things (including some romance). The author really makes it feel like this is truly a book written by a group of girls at a camp. And I love that. Because most puberty books (that I saw/read) were pretty stiff and dry. It feels weird to read them and it is also a bit too clinical. This one makes a bit party of it all and I love it. You really feel like one of the girls.

The book is split up into weeks (there are 7 weeks of camp + one Last Day in total). Each chapter is about a different subject. From feelings to boobs to vaginas (or vulvas) to food and health and more!

Everything is explained in a clear way, from how to do tampons, to boobs and their differences, to how to clean your face, and much more. Either with illustrations guiding the way or them telling you about it step by step or a combination of both. Then there are recipes, charts, food ideas, comics.

The book also goes a step further by also telling about health, eating healthy, about sleep and how necessary it is (even if you would want to just read Harry Potter all night for days straight :P).

I just loved the little notes with comments from the girls (or conversations) that dotted the pages.

One thing that stood out was the deodorant chapter. Do they not have those deodorants in America that doesn’t stain/leave white spots? I know back when I was in the puberty this chapter would have been brilliant as you didn’t have much choice in deodorant back then, but these days there are tons of fun and lovely smelling deodorants that don’t stain your shirt, so you don’t need to do all that stuff they do in the deodorant chapter nor do they have to worry about it staining shirts.

I loved it when the chapter with boys came up and we find out that the boys stole The Book from the girls to write their own chapter and talk about what changes for boys. That was just the best, I was already wondering how the girls would talk about that subject, but now it was up to the boys to do it, and they did it with lots of hilarity and penises. 😛

One thing I would have liked to see, and something that I would have loved to read about during my puberty, is make-up. What kinds there are, how to use them, what you can do with them, make your own make-up. It is part of puberty/growing up to try out these things. I know that I was very curious on how to apply make-up and I would have benefited from a fun book like this to tell me the whats and hows.

The art? Fabulous! Fantastic! And so so much fun. Then again as soon as I found out it was Meg Hunt, whose picture book: Interstellar Cinderella I loved, I just knew I would love this one as well. And I did! She did an amazing book at making this book even more fun, interesting, and colourful. Plus I just adore how she drew the girls.

So yep, highly recommended! A fantastic book about growing up/puberty.