A note from the author.
We truly wished we could be a 'fly on the wall' while our kids were at camp.
Our daughters were ten and eight the summers they first went off to sleepaway camp in western North Carolina. Three weeks each. My wife and I were probably more eager to visit at the midpoint than they were to see us. We checked the camp's photo posts every day, squinting at group shots looking for a familiar shoulder or a half-hidden face. Was that Erin near the lake? Is Kelsey the one with the bandana? It wasn't enough. We wanted more.
Then, on day 4, we got the first of a series of letters from Kelsey:
Three days in a row.
By the time we called the Camp Director, Kelsey was already happy. She'd made friends with the camp nurse — a woman who let her do crafts when she wasn't up for the strenuous activities, and who understood that a kid with a stomachache sometimes just needed a quieter morning.
When we visited mid-session, Kelsey came bounding down the hill and leapt into my arms. The first thing she said wasn't I missed you. It was: "Erin is ignoring me!" Sibling rivalry, alive and well, even at camp. We laughed about it for years. We're still laughing about it.
But it stuck with me — how much had happened in those three weeks that we'd never quite know. The homesick days and the recovery. The camp nurse who got it right. The sibling indignation. The chef whose food they raved about for years.
Erin once said, casually, that camp was the place where she could be herself — a comment my wife and I both still remember, years later, because of how clearly she'd named something we hadn't put words to.
That's why the Camp Journal exists.
Not as a memory book — though it is one. As the starting point for the conversations that wouldn't happen otherwise. The ones that get answered with "it was fine." A parent reads something specific in the journal — "the funniest thing was when..." — and that leads to a conversation... and perhaps even a deeper understanding of their child and an appreciation for camp.
With training as a researcher and years of experience conducting interviews, I knew that people respond when you pose questions in a way that encourages them to answer, easily and naturally. Having three kids of our own also taught me how to converse with them in a way they find relatable and engaging. After publishing the original, I sat around picnic tables with groups of kids who shared what they'd written — much of it heartwarming, often funny, sometimes poignant. I also gathered feedback from parents separately. Those conversations, plus hundreds of letters from kids and parents telling us what they liked most and would change, revealed that the Camp Journal works for both kids, who love writing in it, and parents, who treasure what their kids choose to share. They also confirmed just how much fun and meaningful camp is for kids.
I always knew I'd bring it back. The 2026 edition is the right moment — Erin's daughter is heading to her first summer at sleepaway camp this year, the same age that Erin was when she went away to camp. So this summer she and lots of other kids — including some who couldn't otherwise afford one — will bring along a copy of the updated Camp Journal.
For this 2026 edition, Shannon Snow illustrated every page — quilt-bordered icons, hand-drawn covers, the visual language that makes kids want to open it up and write something. About half the prompts are from the original edition; the other half are new — pages I knew I needed to write once I saw what the original had taught me. When first published, the Camp Journal was named one of the Best Products for kids by Dr. Toy, reviewed by more than twenty national newspapers, and carried by L.L. Bean, Barnes & Noble, and hundreds of other stores and camps.
Kelsey, by the way, is fine. She'll tell you now that she loved camp.
Camp ends. The stories live on.