LISA PAPADEMETRIOU is the author of the Confectionately Yours series and many other novels for young readers. She lives in Massachusetts with her family.
NEIL SWAAB is a freelance illustrator, art director, cartoonist, animator, writer, and educator. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
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TuRN THe PAGe FOR A SNeAK PReVieW!
A SLAM-BAM ENDiNG(?) FOR OuR STORY
Let’s get one thing out of the way here.
My name is Rafe Khatchadorian, and if you already know me, then you know that trouble tends to follow me around like a bad smell. But if we’ve never met before, I just want to say—it’s not my fault! (Okay, not always.) I hope you can trust me for a little while and give me a chance to explain.
In fact, I don’t know if this has ever been done, but I’m going to give you the short version of this story—right here, right now—so you know what you’re getting into. It goes like this:
I went to summer camp. I did some stuff. Some of it, I’m proud of. Some of it… not so much.
Then, before the full eight weeks of camp was up, things went kind of crazy (okay, a lot crazy), and I ended up packing my bags early.
It might have had something to do with this:
Or maybe it looked more like this:
It also could have had something to do with this:
Or with this:
And I can tell you for sure that it definitely had something to do with this:
Somewhere in all of that, there’s an ending to this crazy story. There’s some middle in there too. And yeah, okay, some of it didn’t exactly happen like that. What can I say? I like to keep things interesting.
But don’t worry. I’ll always steer you straight… eventually.
The point is, my summer at Camp Wannamorra basically went the same way a lot of my life goes. There were some ups, some downs, some good luck, and a whole lot of bad luck before it all came crashing down around me in a giant ball of flame. (Not a real one—that was my last book.)
But that’s as much as I’m going to tell you for now. If you want all the gory details, you’re just going to have to read this whole thing.
Because, as the Booger-Eater always said, getting there is half the fun.
WeLCOMe TO CAMP WANNAMORRA
You know those regular camps, where kids spend the summer running around in the fresh air, and roasting marshmallows, and swimming in the lake all day? Maybe you’ve even been to one of those places.
Well, hold that thought. Here’s another question:
Have you ever read the book holes? If you haven’t, you should, because it’s an awesome book. But there was a camp in that story too—Camp Green Lake, which was actually a prison for kids.
Let’s say that the place I went, Camp Wannamorra, was somewhere right in the middle of all that. Half camp and half prison. And by prison, I mean school.
That’s right. Me. Summer school. Again.
If you read my last two books, then you know that school isn’t exactly my best subject. In fact, I’ve already done time at Hills Village Middle School, Cathedral School of the Arts, and Airbrook Arts. (I’m kind of, sort of, an artist, but more about that later.) Crazy, right? Let’s just say I move around a lot.
The bottom line: If I wanted to keep going to Airbrook, I was going to have to “do some work” over the summer. And we all know what that means.
So when Mom told me and my sister, Georgia, that she’d found the “perfect” camp for us, I was suspicious right away.
Every morning from eight to twelve at Camp Wannamorra, we would be in classes. I was going to take the kind for kids who needed a little extra help. And brainiac Georgia, who couldn’t even wait to start middle school in the fall, was going to take the “Challenge Program,” for kids who had nothing better to do during school vacation than get smarter than they already were.
The more Mom talked about it, the more excited Georgia became, which made me even more suspicious. She kept calling it “summer camp,” but I was pretty sure it was going to look something like this:
Some of it was even worse.
LET’S GET ONE THING STRAIGHT: RAFE KHATCHADORIAN IS NO BOOGER-EATER!
He’S JuST STuCK AT SuMMeR CAMP WiTH ONe.
Contents
Welcome
Dedication
Chapter 1: Rafe Is a Big, Fat Liar
Chapter 2: Don’t Mess with a Khatchadorian
Chapter 3: Horrors of an (In)Famous Brother
Chapter 4: Miller the (Mini) Killer
Chapter 5: Rhonda Helps Me, Helps, Helps Me, Rhonda
Chapter 6: The Princess Patrol!
Chapter 7: The Awesomes!
Chapter 8: We Stink!
Chapter 9: Home, Sweet Home
Chapter 10: Sweet Home Georgiabama
Chapter 11: My Mom Is My Best Friend
Chapter 12: The Princess Dress Code
Chapter 13: Not My Problem
Chapter 14: This Is Probably a Ginormous Mistake, But…
Chapter 15: I’m In!
Chapter 16: Mrs. Stricker Loves Me
Chapter 17: Mrs. Stricker Loves Me Not…
Chapter 18: “The First Detention Is Always the Hardest”—RAFE K.
Chapter 19: A Day at the School Factory
Chapter 20: Every Band Needs a Groupie
Chapter 21: Squealing on Rafe Is Fun
Chapter 22: My Mom Is My Worst Nightmare
Chapter 23: It Ain’t Easy Being Green
Chapter 24: The Princesses’ Hairstyle Rules
Chapter 25: I Wasn’t Crying About My Hair
Chapter 27: Stop, Book Thief!
Chapter 28: My Six Favorite Books This Year (So Far)
Chapter 29: The Truth About Jeanne Galletta
Chapter 30: General Rafe Torture
Chapter 31: Rafe’s Revenge
Chapter 32: Playing War
Chapter 33: Shoo Pie, Don’t Bother Me
Chapter 34: Completely Insane
Chapter 35: Grandma’s Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown
Chapter 36: “We Stink” Up the Garage Sale
Chapter 37: The Aftermath
Chapter 38: Going Bananas
Chapter 39: I Find You Offensive, Mini-Miller the Killer
Chapter 40: The Princesses
Chapter 41: Georgia’s Last Stand
Chapter 42: Rhonda Runs
Chapter 43: South Nowhere Street
Chapter 44: Smacked Down
Chapter 45: When You Seek Revenge, Dig Two Graves
Chapter 46: Revenge Served Lukewarm
Chapter 47: A Visit with the Lizard King
Chapter 48: This Deserves Two Chapters
Chapter 49: Crime and Punishment
Chapter 50: Shrinkology
Chapter 51: More Shrinkology
Chapter 52: Jeanne Galletta Is Actually a Princess
Chapter 53: Practice Doesn’t Always Make Perfect
Chapter 54: How I Became a Princess
Chapter 55: The Strange Truth
Chapter 56: Jules Explains It All
Chapter 57: I’m Not Going
Chapter 59: Band Gone Weird
Chapter 60: Princess Gone Wild
Chapter 61: My Mom Is… My Mom
Chapter 62: One Other Thing
Chapter 63: Cease-Fire Between Rafe and Me (This Is Real. Honest.)
Chapter 64: Cease-Fire Over, War Resumes
Chapter 65: And… I Lost the Bet
A Preview of Middle School: How I Survived Bullies, Broccoli and Snake Hill
Copyright
Copyright
&n
bsp; The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright © 2013 by James Patterson
Illustrations by Neil Swaab
Cover design by Alison Impey
Cover art by Laura Park
Cover © 2013 Hachette Book Group, Inc
Copyright © 2013 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
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Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
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First e-book edition: March 2013
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ISBN 978-0-316-20752-2