Overweight and unathletic, 13-year-old Elvin Bishop dreads his three weeks at a summer camp designed to initiate incoming freshmen into the Christian Brothers Academy. The experience turns out to be even worse than Elvin imagined when he realizes the camp's supreme purpose is to channel each of the boys into an athletics slot and Elvin fails miserably at one sport after another. Much of Elvin's problem is attitude: he is not a team player nor does he have any intention of ever becoming one. But he manages (just barely) to endure his ordeal, describing every trial in great detail from his cynical, sarcastic, and ultimately entirely sane, point of view. Hilarious from start to finish, this brilliant social satire completely exposes the myth of modern masculinity. (Ages 13-16)