"Happy Campers offers the big dose of positivity parents need! Make your parenting far more enjoyable and effective by adopting practices camp counselors use at summer camp to create fun, life-changing, and character-building experiences for their campers. The 'Bringing Camp Home' section at the end of each chapter provides proven ideas and practices  to raise kids who are more capable, kind, resilient, and optimistic - and who have the skills to thrive as adults!"    

"Happy Campers is a remarkably powerful parenting guide.  Audrey brings a unique confluence of skills.  She has been a camp director for over three decades and has worked with thousands of children and their parents.  She has seen what produces capable and content children - and what produces the opposite. She combines that experience with a deep understanding of psychology and her own experience as a mother of five.  In Happy Campers, Audrey shares a wealth of knowledge coupled with truly practical advice.  The unexpected benefit is that her advice actually makes being a parent more enjoyable as well as more effective!"

"Although I just got my copy of Happy Campers, by Audrey Monke, you would think I had owned it for years already given the multitude of dog-eared pages, the massive amount of notes in the margins, and the number of parents I’ve already lent the book to, urging them to read specific sections.  Happy Campers is the brand-new, but already well-worn book I wish I had had twenty years ago when I first started my career working with children and families.  It is full of practical, realistic, easy-to-implement, no-cost, research-based, transformational strategies that will help parents and caregivers bring the magic of summer camp into daily home interactions.   Happy Campers shines a light on nine overall positive practices used in quality summer camps and offers readers dozens (and dozens!) of ways to use these strategies to help kids and families thrive year-round.  Starting with ideas for building nurturing connections between family members and then exploring critical topics such as the importance of optimism in interactions, how to nurture grit and determination, helping kids experience independence and grow their individual identities, making kindness cool, building healthy friendship skills, and cultivating the kind of self-confidence that makes kids unstoppable, Monke’s book is as realistic and readable as it is invaluable.   As a School Counselor, therapist, and parent, Happy Campers is everything I could hope for in a book and more!  I highly recommend it for anyone living or working with young people!"

“Inspiring and irresistibly practical! Happy Campers is a post-millennial parenting treasure--brimming with dozens of essential, achievable and transformative parenting strategies. Laugh and cry with Audrey Monke as she masterfully distills a lifetime of professional camp director wisdom that will guide your family to great joy and fun together while becoming more deeply optimistic, communicative, resilient, adaptable, socially competent and emotionally confident.”

“Every girl and every boy should go to camp and discover hidden talents, inner strengths, and develop skills they will use for the rest of their lives. Happy Campers provides the indispensable steps that make a thriving life possible. As a 30-year educator and camp director, Audrey’s insights, research and storytelling make this a must read for parents everywhere.”

“Camp insiders know that the lessons learned at camp change kids for the better. With Happy Campers, Audrey Monke allows parents to gain the knowledge of a lifelong camp director and parent of five kids. Monke’s writing is practical, full of stories from camp and parenting life with concrete simple strategies to help kids become well-adjusted adults who continue strong relationships with their parents. I’ve been a working social worker helping children and families for more than 25 years, and I still learned many useful strategies for connecting to my kids and helping them make a healthy transition to adulthood.”

“Audrey so beautifully combines profound wisdom with practical and doable strategies in such an encouraging way that we are left believing we can indeed create the magic of camp in our lives through the rest of the year! This book is such a compelling invitation to be more intentional, and in such a fun way, to support the friendships and self-esteem of our kids when they need it most.”

“As a camp director, one of my favorite things about being part of the camp community is the sharing of ideas in our field. I have followed Audrey’s blogs and podcast for a long time, and I am thrilled that she’s also written the book. She is a wealth of information on child development, and I frequently share her ideas with our camp parents. Happy Campers is a great resource for anyone who is invested in the growth of children!”

"The amazing benefits of camp can be nurtured beyond the summer months. This wonderful book puts it right in your hands."

"Audrey Monke has spent decades refining the art of growing happy campers.  All her experiences tell her that what kids learn at camp translates into successful lives and futures.  In this book, she backs up her anecdotal information with research. Children are transformed by camp, and parents can learn so much from Audrey’s thoughtful counsel on how to translate camp to home—how to encourage positive transformation all year round.  Happy Campers is a must read for all parents—those who send their children to camp and those who should."

"Combining personal parenting experience with over thirty years of owning and operating a top-notch sleep-away summer camp. Audrey has come up with practical and easy to apply techniques for parents to bring the beauties of the sleep-away camp experience into their own families. Presenting 9 secrets to successful parenting with specific examples of what works and what doesn't makes this an invaluable tool for any family that will help in the raising of happy and healthy adults. As a long-time camp owner/director myself, I found Audrey's book an easy to read and use resource for anyone working with young people, either in a job or as a parent. I thought I knew a lot about parenting and raising young people, but Audrey opened my eyes to many new and useful ideas."

"Audrey has taken her many years of experience as an educator, researcher, camp owner, and parent and distilled what she has learned into some very practical and impactful lessons that parents can use to create happier, stronger children and families. I have taken lessons from Happy Campers and applied them to my camp and my parenting."

“In Happy Campers, Audrey amplifies her own significant ‘dent in the universe’ by not only highlighting the positive life-shaping impact of the quality summer camp experience, but also providing parents with a treasure chest of tools to bring that growth into their own homes. Drawing on her extensive experience and wisdom, as well as that of other youth development professionals, Audrey offers counsel and activities to cultivate greater connection and competence in our children.”