It’s good to be getting back into the flow of things after returning from our holiday to Tasmania (we were so incredibly lucky that all the sparkly things in the sky aligned and we actually made it there and back with only a few medium-sized hiccoughs along the way). I’ll share some photos on a blog post soon.
One of the books we took along to read aloud, at my daughter’s request, was Camp Midnight, book 4 of the Ella at Eden series. Now, if you don’t already know, Ella at Eden is part of a Scholastic multi-series franchise that includes Ella and Olivia, Meet Ella, Ella Diaries, Olivia’s Secret Scribbles, and now Ella at Eden, where older sister Ella begins her high-school adventures with a scholarship to an exclusive boarding school for girls. Each series is written by a different author under a work-for-hire contract. And, yes, as you would expect, there are continuity issues with the change in authors, so much so that it’s best to think of the Ella, Zoe, and Olivia of Ella at Eden as completely different characters to their Ella Diaries counterparts.
That minor technicality aside, it was while reading Camp Midnight that I really noticed the strength and depth of the character arcs that this series is beginning to develop. Characters who were “catty” in Books 1 and 2 are very well fleshed out in Books 3 and 4 and given complex motivations and back stories. I’m intrigued enough to be looking forward to diving into The School Spy soon, and then we’ll need to get hold of Book 6, The London Thief.
This is an excellent series for Grade 5/6, looking ahead to the move to high-school.
Elle Carter Neal is the author of the middle-grade chapter book The Convoluted Key, picture book I Own All the Blue, and teen science-fantasy novel Madison Lane and the Wand of Rasputin. She has been telling stories for as long as she can remember, holding childhood slumber-party audiences entranced until the early hours of the morning. Elle decided to be an author the day she discovered that real people wrote books and that writing books was a real job.