Hartinger, Brent. The Order of the Poison Oak.

HARTINGER, Brent. The order of the poison oak. HarperCollins. 211p. c2005. 0-06-056732-5. $6.99. JS

Russel Middlebrook, the narrator of Hartinger's Geography Club, is back in this summer-camp sequel sure to please fans of the original book. While Geography focused on Russel coming to terms with his identity as a gay teen and forging bonds with other teens, queer and straight, Poison Oak finds Russel more at ease within himself yet still struggling with how to present himself to the world. When his friend Gunnar offers him a job as a camp counselor up in the mountains, Russel sees it as a chance to escape to a place where no one will know him as "the gay kid." Camp Serenity, where he works with childhood burn survivors, gives Russel a welcome break from harassment by homophobic high school jocks, but presents its own challenges: love triangles, misunderstandings with friends, bratty ten-year-olds and the demands of Russel's first try at being an authority figure. As he works to get past his initial sense of discomfort around the burn survivors, with their visible scars and disabilities, Russel, with his less obvious scars, gains an understanding of the common ground they occupy.

Lest any of this sounds angst-ridden, it's all leavened by Russel's chatty, sometimes sarcastic, sometimes enthusiastic teen voice. He addresses the reader like one teen telling his story to another, lending the story an immediacy and sense of reality, and his observations can be funny as well as refreshingly honest. There are sexual references and scenes, but no graphic language or descriptions. The paperback edition contains some extra material, including a song from the novel and an interview with the author. Kathryn Kulpa, Libn., UMass Dartmouth Lib., Dartmouth, MA