This story was well-told and engaging throughout. I think it will definitely find its right audience and continue to inspire.

I loved this book. It was so cute and sweet, and I loved the characters and the setting.

Vega is a great narrator, and I loved her voice throughout the book. She's outgoing, but also a bit shy and quiet at times—I think that's what made me like her so much. Her relationship with her parents is also very realistic: they're supportive, but they don't always understand Vega's decisions or what she wants out of life.

The story itself was great too: it's about friendship and loyalty—and how you can't always choose where your friends are or who you want to be friends with. It also explores the idea of summer camp as an escape from home life, which I thought was really cool!

Overall, I'd definitely recommend this book to anyone who likes middle grade fiction!

Whitney Gardner does a great job of creating stories that are character driven and Long Distance is no exception. A story about friendship, loss, moving, and growth, Long Distance is a story that will be very relatable to many kids. Gardner's art is colorful and approachable. What let me down, in the end, is the mystery which started out strong but seemed to fizzle. And I also couldn't help but feel, perhaps because these themes are so common in middle grade novels, that I had read this story before.

"Long-distance friends are real friends. You just have to make the effort." Very relatable.

I'm a big fan of Whitney Gardner and I read everything she writes. I thought this was super cute but probably a little too cheesy for my taste. Overall it was a cute story about friendship and it has the thing I love most about Gardner's stories: constant celebration of the things that make us different.

I'm giving this one 3.5/5 ⭐ and I'd probably buy it for any kid who loves science/astronomy (like Vega).

This book was so sweet and really cute! I was expecting a fun and ernest story about trying to deal with a move and not being able to see your best friend. Instead a got that but in space with Aliens! This is a must have for any Middle grade graphic novel collection! Great for fans of Raina Telgamier and Svetlana Chmakova. I think this would also appeal to a lot of neurodivergent kids because the kids at the camp really seem coded as neurodivergent as they all have a hard time making friends and they all have special interests. The way the book resolved was great and i think will be satisfying to readers.

“Friendship is a renewable source. You can’t run out, you can always make more.”
🪐
Vega is not having a good summer. She and her dads had to move from Portland to Seattle, leaving behind her BFF, Hailey. Sending that she needs to make friends her dads make her go to a summer camp for the friendless. But when Vega gets there things start to seem off. She decides to team up with her fellow camp mates to see what’s happening at this very odd camp.
🪐
This was such a cute MG graphic novel about friendships. Everyone who’s had to say goodbye to a friend will connect with this story. I loved the diversity, the artwork and the overall theme. This book is perfect for any upper elementary or middle school library.

4 ⭐️

A super cute middle grade scifi graphic novel! This book is what you'd get if you crossed Children of Exile by Margaret Peterson Haddix and Shirley and Jamila Save Their Summer!

Vega does not want to leave Portland, OR for Seattle WA and she ESPECIALLY does not want to leave her best friend and she DEFINITELY does not want to be sent to camp "Very Best Friend" as an effort for her to make friends in the area. When Vega gets to camp, she finds that the camp is not exactly what it seems.

I loved the characters in this book, they are diverse, empathetic, and smart in their own, unique ways! Vega slowly realizes that she made friends--other than her BFF (or VBF) in Portland--at camp who she can trust and depend on. This is middle-grade graphic novel is out of this world...

When Vega has to leave her best friend behind in Portland, she wonders if she'll be able to make friends. She's in for more than she bargained for when her Dads send her off to a Camp for doing just that!

Whitney Gardner has done it again! I still need to read <u>Fake Blood</u> but my students are so obsessed with it (they legitimately fight over it), that I'm going to go ahead and guess it's another 5 star read. The perfect mix of humor and heart with a little bit of weird thrown in and great illustrations. Can't wait to get this title for my library!

A story of this nature is well suited to the graphic novel format. Not only do we have the already outside reality nature of summer camp, this is a camp where something weird is happening, so we have odd behavior from characters. These behaviors are well expressed by the illustrations.While a savvy reader will figure out the camp's secret pretty early on it's still an entertaining read.

This one was just okay for me! I appreciated the art syle and I can see its appeal to younger readers, so I definitely would still recommend it!

This is just too much fun packed into one book. The beginning is a little slow, but it is all worth it in the end. Vega has to move from Portland to Seattle, and she is not happy about it. She is even more annoyed when her dads send her to camp for the soul purpose of making new friends. She doesn’t need new friends because she still has her best friend in Portland, but Dad and Pops insist. Camp is weird. There are some cool kids like Qwerty, Gemma, and Issac, but other things are just not right. Plus George Washington, the kid from the camp brochure, is not only weird but annoying. Follow along as the camp kids figure out what is going on at camp, come to everyone’s rescue and actually make new friends. This book was a really fun romp. It reads quickly and will leave the reader craving more from this author.

Vega is a girl who's not thrilled with summer vacation this year. Her parents have moved her from Portland, Oregon, to a new life in Seattle, and she's miserable. She's left behind her best friend, Halley, and to add insult to injury, her dads are sending her off to Camp Very Best Friend, hoping she'll make some new friends. When the Camp VBF bus pulls up, Vega's got a strange feeling about this camp... and it only gets weirder once she and the other campers arrive! Cell phones don't work, and the counselors are just... different. Together with fellow campers Qwerty (like the keyboard), and twins Gemma and Isaac, Vega decides to get to the bottom of this odd camp in a hilarious story about making friends! Early in the story, Vega Googles how to make friends; each piece of advice she receives heads a different chapter, giving readers a humorous idea of what to expect. The characters are likable, and dialogue and story move at a good pace, and readers are going to love this summer camp story. Artwork is colorful with cartoon-realistic characters, similar to Raina Telgemeier and Shannon Hale's characters. A good book to hand to introverts - Camp VBF is filled with kids who don't find it that easy to make friends, until they're put into the unusual situation that sets the stage for this story. Vega is interested in astronomy, Qwerty relates to computers "better than people", and Gemma and Isaac are all about rocks and minerals, so there's a nice little STEM/STEAM thread quietly running through the story. A fun summer story that satisfies wanderlust.

This was a fun Graphic Novel, with a good message! And a perfect summer read!

I received an e-ARC from the publisher.

This one didn't quite work for me. I liked the premise, but it just didn't follow through at the end for me.

I started reading Long Distance without knowing too much about it. It is such a cute, fun graphic novel about friendship. I highly recommend this for young and old alike!! You will not be disappointed.

An absolutely adorable story about friendship and starting over with cute illustrations and a little bit of learning thrown in. Vega has just moved to Seattle from Portland and her dads sign her up for a camp that promises to help introverted kids make new friends. Vega doesn't want to because she has a best friend back in Portland and she thinks this is more than enough. However, when things start to get weird at camp Vega has to team up with computer expert Querty, her bunkmate Gemma and Gemma's twin brother to figure out why the camp is so utterly bizarre, and why the bacon is so cold and squshy.

Vega is downright upset when her parents up and move from Portland, Oregon, to Seattle—mostly because she’s leaving behind her best (and only) friend, and she’s convinced she’ll never make another friend again. But when her dads ship her off to Friend Camp (a place for lonely introverted children like herself), Vega soon begins to realize that things aren’t exactly what they seem.

Another fun, quick read. I’m going to keep it short and sweet because this is one that is best experienced knowing as little as possible so that you fully appreciate the twist.

However, the themes of friendship are strong, along with the idea that it’s okay to change and move and grow as a person, and that your friendships will change and move and grow as well. Long distance friendships take work and won’t always look the same as they did when you lived close by, and that’s okay—and it’s okay to make new friends, too. And it’s okay if you feel uncomfortable in your own skin and that you’re different—there are friends who will like you for who you are and appreciate your quirks and traits and loyalty.

I received this ARC from NetGalley for an honest review.

This was an unexpectedly and delightfully weird middle grade graphic novel.

Vega's parents make her leave her one and only friend in Portland to move to Seattle, and then immediately ship her off to summer camp to make new friends. Strange and mysterious things keep happening at camp, so Vega and a few of her fellow campers investigate. This is a cute story about friendship and how it's ok to have more than one friend -- but with a strange twist.

This will be appealing to fans of Kristin Gudsnuk (Making Friends), Shannon Hale (Real Friends), Svetlana Chmakova (Awkward), and (of course) Raina Telgemeier,

Highly recommended for grades 3+.

Long Distance, a graphic novel by Whitney Gardner, tells the quintessential story of moving away from home and having to face the challenges of making new friends in a new place. But the story does manage to have an unexpected twist that keeps it fresh, I won't spoil it here so you'll have to read it to find out.

Vega must move from her hometown of Portland to Seattle for one of her dad's new job. She leaves her best friend behind and everything she knows. To encourage her to make new friends, her dads sign her up for a summer camp. Of course, Vega is resistant, insisting that she already has a best friend and why should she make a new one? But go to camp she must. To prepare for camp Vega researches online "how to make friends" and comes across a list of tips and each chapter is structured around that list, helping to move the plot along.

The story is set largely at the camp where Vega meets several campers who are also having a hard time making friends. Weird things keep happening at the camp and one of the boys is acting very strangely. The plot thickens at camp and this group of kids who have all had a hard time fitting in must work together as a team to come to a resolution and to make it home safely.

Vega is a very relatable character. Making friends at any age is hard, as demonstrated by Vega's challenge to one of her dads that he has not made any friends recently either. This can be a heart wrenching and intimidating issue at any age. While Vega is resistant to the idea of branching out, as are most of the characters, when she begins to open up, she finds a truly unique group of friends. She also discovers that being friends over a long distance isn't impossible, it just requires a little more effort.

The graphics are colorful and interesting, and the dialog is clearly laid out and easy to follow along. This is particularly helpful because one of the kids at camp has a lot to say! The book is sizable in length, over three hundred pages, making it a solid read for upper elementary school and middle schoolers.

Overall this was very well written. There are a few instances where the plot smooths over rather more quickly than an adult reader would find plausible, but this is unlikely to bother most younger readers. This would be a great read for anyone who enjoyed Making Friends or New Kid.