Molly Saves the Day by Valerie Tripp, 1988.

Molly and her friends, Linda and Susan, are attending Camp Gowonagin over the summer.  They love summer camp because there are so many fun things to do, like nature hikes, archery, arts and crafts, and campfire sing alongs.  The only thing Molly doesn’t like is swimming underwater, although she’s embarrassed to admit it.  Susan has trouble with canoeing because she doesn’t know how to keep her canoe moving straight.  Other than that, all three girls have fun at camp and as their time at camp is coming to an end, they think about how much they’ll miss it.

Then, the counselors announce a special event for the end of camp: The Color War.  At Camp Gowonagin, the Color War is like a giant game of Capture the Flag.  The girls are randomly assigned to two teams, Red and Blue.  The Red Team will be guarding their flag on a small island in the lake near camp.  The Blue Team’s job will be to try to steal the flag from the Red Team.  The contest will take place over the course of an entire day.

Molly and Susan end up on the Blue Team, while Linda is assigned to the Red Team.  Molly and Susan aren’t really looking forward to the Color War because their team captain will be Dorinda, a bossy, competitive girl who likes to act like she’s the general of an army and this camp game is a real war.  Molly is uneasy about what Dorinda will order them to do, afraid that it might involve the thing she dreads most, swimming underwater.  The only comfort Molly takes is what her father told her before he went away to war, that being scared is okay because it gives a person a chance to be brave.

As it turns out, Dorinda’s strategy is very simplistic.  She wants the entire Blue Team to row out to the island, landing directly on the beach.  Then, while her army takes the Red Team prisoner, she will triumphantly capture the flag.  Molly says that she thinks that the Red Team will spot them easily if land on the beach and asks if there is a less obvious place where they could land.  However, Dorinda simply says that there is no less obvious place and taunts Molly about whether she would rather swim there underwater.  Molly and Susan have no choice but to follow Dorinda’s orders.

Of course, Dorinda’s plan doesn’t work out as she thought.  The Red Team’s scout spots them right away and takes most of the Blue Team prisoner.  Only Molly and Susan are left free because Susan accidentally overturned their canoe on the way to the island.  After they manage to get back into their canoe and bail it out, they try to approach the beach, but Linda spots them and signals to the rest of the Red Team.  Molly and Susan have no choice but to return to camp to avoid capture.

Back at camp, the two of them have to decide what to do.  They are vastly outnumbered by the Red Team, and they feel betrayed by Susan treating them as her enemies.  Molly does think up a plan for freeing the rest of the Blue Team, but to carry it out, she must face what she fears the most . . . and force Linda to face something that frightens her.

Molly and Susan (and the rest of the Blue Team, once they’re free) manage to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, but they worry that perhaps their friendship with Linda is ruined because of the trick they play on her.  Fortunately, Linda decides to take it in the spirit of the game and shows sympathy for the girls when it turns out that their victory plan ends with the entire Blue Team getting poison ivy.

I’m with Molly and Susan in not liking overly competitive games and people, but I thought that the book handled this situation well, focusing on how the girls each had to face something that was difficult for them in order to do their jobs for their respective teams.  It was a learning experience for all of them, and part of what they learned was that facing what worried them the most wasn’t as bad as they thought it would be.

In the back of the book, there is a section of historical information about summer camps during World War II.  Because many families were separated by the war and people were discouraged from traveling much in order to save fuel and space on trains, children were often sent away to summer camps by themselves instead of going on family vacations.  The camps could be run by different organizations, such as the Girls Scouts, the Boy Scouts, or the Red Cross.  There, they would learn wilderness skills, like how to identify different plants, how to swim, and how to build a campfire.  They also had lots of fun activities, like horseback riding and arts and crafts.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.