Thalia Kids Book Club Camp

Camp 2024 Schedule

In-person camp meets Monday - Friday, 9:00 AM - 4:00 PM. Campers will be admitted starting at 8:30 AM.

• Week 1: July 8 - 12 for ages 9-11
• Week 2: July 15 - 19 for ages 12-14

The Thalia Kids Book Club Camp fee is $700 per week, per camper.

Register before March 1, 2024 for our early bird rate: 10% off your registration!

• Cancellations before April 1, 2024 will be refunded in full.
• Cancellations after April 1, 2024 will not be refunded.

Author guests have included a diverse line-up of established writers and illustrators alongside emerging talents, each with a unique perspective on books and writing.

Some of the highlights have included a rare visit with Norton Juster to discuss his classic The Phantom Tollbooth, intimate conversations with Award-winning authors Kate DiCamillo (The Tale of Despereaux), Rebecca Stead (When You Reach Me), R.J. Palacio (Wonder), Linda Sue Park (Wing & Claw series), Peter Brown (The Wild Robot), Jason Reynolds (The Boy in the Black Suit), and Lauren Oliver (Liesl and Po); bestselling authors Adam Gidwitz (A Tale Dark and Grimm), Gail Carson Levine (Ella Enchanted), Pseudonymous Bosch (The Secret series), Maile Meloy (The Apothecary), Wendy Mass (Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life), Chris Grabenstein (Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library), and Nova Ren Suma (The Walls Around Us); as well as introductions to writers such as Claire Legrand (Some Kind of Happiness), Leila Sales (Once Was a Time), Neela Vaswani (Same Sun Here), Daniel José Older (Shadowshaper), and Renée Watson (This Side of Home).

Campers have also met with illustrators including Lincoln Peirce (Big Nate), Chris Raschka (Seriously, Norman!), Sophie Blackall (Missed Connections), George O'Connor (Olympians), graphic designer Chip Kidd, and Percy Jackson cover artist John Rocco, who led a workshop on cover design.

Other book related activities included a book-making workshop with the Center for Book Arts, cartooning with graphic novelist Matt Phelan (The Storm in the Barn), and an exploration into comic books with Dave Roman (Astronaut Academy) and Raina Telgemeier (Ghosts).

Each week, Thalia Kids Book Club campers go on a couple of adventures around the city with our author guests. In the past we got the chance to go on a top-secret field trip with Brian Selznick (author/illustrator of The Invention of Hugo Cabret) to the Queens Museum of Art and the old World’s Fairgrounds to hear about Wonderstruck a year before the book was published, we spent an afternoon at the Bronx Museum of Art with the National Book Award nominee Rita Williams-Garcia (One Crazy Summer), and made a trip to The Colbert Report to meet with a team of comedy writers.

In addition, campers visited with editors, designers, and publicists at Penguin Random House Children's Books, where they received a surprise visit from Christopher Paolini (Eragon). Other trips have taken us to the Park Avenue Armory, the South Street Seaport, Trinity Cemetery, the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art, The Joffrey Ballet School, The Cooper Hewitt Museum, The Museum of the Moving Image, The Tenement Museum, and the New York Hall of Science, among many others.

Wondering what a typical week at camp looks like? Click here to see a week from 2017, or check out the Book Club Camp Blog!

If you have any questions at any time, please do not hesitate to contact us:

[email protected]