Author Sarah Henning heads to Monster Camp for summer break

Sarah Henning. // image courtesy the author

Lawrence author Sarah Henning has written a slew of genre and YA fiction over the course of her career as a writer, like the fantasy of Sea Witch, the medieval action of The Princess Will Save You, and the sports romance of Throw Like A Girl. Her latest, Monster Camp, sees her leaning into writing for a younger audience, in this story “about a human girl who must put on the performance of her life when she realizes what she thought was a LARPing summer camp is full of real monsters!”

It’s utterly charming, even for those readers far past the age of braces and locker combinations. Horror fans of all ages will definitely see themselves in junior spooky kid Sylvie, Monster Camp‘s protagonist. When the book showed up in our mailbox, we absolutely devoured it over the course of a long Sunday on the couch, and so we were beyond excited to meet up with the author at t. Loft in west Lawrence one evening to discuss Monster Camp just ahead of its release back in May.

The book’s out now from Margaret K. McElderry Books. Henning will be at a “Meet the Authors” event at Monticello Library in Shawnee on Thursday, July 13, along with fellow writers Julie Murphy and Natalie C. Parker.

The Pitch: This book is in line with your other books, but it’s also really different. What made you want to dip your toes into spooky kid territory?

Sarah Henning: This is my eighth book and the first seven are young adult books. This is technically a middle grade, so it’s for readers eight to 12, and most of my other books are like 12 plus. And really, this kind of book wasn’t around when I was a kid. You had Ramona Quimby and then it was like you jumped into Harry Potter, which wasn’t even around when I was younger ’cause I’m an old.

Then I was just reading adult murder mysteries, whatever I could find. My kids are 14 and eight and I really started gravitating towards–it’d be fun and challenging to write for a younger audience. There’s different aspects to a story. The language is different. The whole pace of everything is different. It’s actually more difficult. It is so technical and difficult to write shorter.

You having an eight year-old and a 14 year-old seems perfect because Monster Camp is a a book written where the older sibling could read it with the younger and they both enjoy it.

The character is in middle school. My son is in eighth grade for two more weeks and maybe can identify with the character as far as being in middle school and what that life is like, but my eight year old? Seeing monsters become real–she was totally into it.

Summer camp horror is a very specific subgenre, and you’ve nailed it, but for kids.

Yeah, ’cause that’s the thing. I’ve been doing these little Instagram chats with other middle-grade writers and one consistent thing that we’ve talked about is kids actually don’t mind being scared, especially in a book, because they can pull out.

You think about Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and how popular that book was at book fairs–it’s still popular. I literally bought one from my kid’s Scholastic Magazine ’cause I was like, “Ooh, I remember this book. I loved it,” and then my daughter liked it so fast. She’s the eight year old. Kids don’t mind being scared. The popularity of Goosebumps kind of tells the story of that, but I don’t really think almost this book is very scary except that Sylvie is in a situation where she can’t pull out.

I guess the elevator pitch is that Sylvie is this 11 year old girl. She’s going to go into seventh grade. She much rather will play as a vampire than be like a normal human girl in middle who’s picked on and just doesn’t like her life very much. She kind of does her first boundary pushing and she lies to her dad so that she can get into the summer camp that she thinks is for live-action role play monsters just like her, and it turns out to be real monsters. Then she’s the only human stuck there and has to pretend to be a monster for a week with real life monsters. Everything that she ever wanted comes true, but in the worst possible way where they think she’s a vampire and they’re offering her blood in the mess hall. What is she supposed to do?

The live-action role-playing aspect of this is so much fun because you’re almost setting out how you can play along.

Right? Yeah. Because, obviously, it can be really technical to do live action roleplay or tabletop games, but like at the heart of it, you’re creating this character and having some fun. That’s sort of how they attack it, you know? It’s not like, “I’ve got 20 on their charisma scale” or whatever. It’s like, “I’m a vampire. I can fly.”

The idea of reinventing yourself is also a summer camp thing, right? It’s this intense time where you can try out a nickname for a week or whatever or pretend to be a vampire and hope you don’t get bit by a werewolf.

What was the nugget for this idea of “What if there are monsters?” but in a charming way, as opposed to, “AAAAH”?

It was really fun building the monsters and trying to figure out what kind of traditional monsters to play with that kids would recognize as an archetype. If you look at my books, they’re all over the map. I’ve done fairy tales and I’ve done sports books and a combination of the two. I’ve been very lucky that my career’s not pigeonholed. A lot of people, if you write fantasy, that’s all you do–“Where are my dragons?” you know?

When I wanted to write something kind of goofy for kids, it, I wanted to do something where–we do watch a lot of Hotel Transylvania. I’ve watched with my kids a few times and just the idea of monsters being real, but they’ve got their own little place and being a fish out of water is super fun. Even the LARPing aspect: we watched the Hawkeye mini-series that they had, and they had LARPing planned into that in a really funny, interesting way.

The idea of just pretending to be somebody else, you could do this at a drama camp, but it’s extra fun to be just one step further on. During the pandemic, my husband and I watched What We Do in the Shadows, which also had some LARPing, but just that goofy side of monsters sounded really fun to explore.

I want to tell a story for kids. I want it to be something I would enjoy and would’ve enjoyed as a kid. You make yourself a person that you’re writing it for because somebody may never see it. You might as well enjoy what you’re doing. Being goofy for a kid and writing in that third-person storytelling voice was really fun. The second I met Sylvie in my head, like we were off to the races, which is the best feeling. It doesn’t happen with every project.

Monster Camp is out now from Margaret K. McElderry Books.

Sarah Henning will be at a “Meet the Authors” event at Monticello Library in Shawnee on Thursday, July 13, along with fellow writers Julie Murphy and Natalie C. Parker. Details on that here.