Don’‘t Let’’s Go to the Dogs Tonight meets Mean Girls in this funny, insightful fish-out-of-water memoir about a young girl coming of age half in a “baboon camp” in Botswana, half in a ritzy Philadelphia suburb.
Keena Roberts split her adolescence between the wilds of an island camp in Botswana and the even more treacherous halls of an elite Philadelphia private school. In Africa, she slept in … Philadelphia private school. In Africa, she slept in a tent, cooked over a campfire, and lived each day alongside the baboon colony her parents were studying. She could wield a spear as easily as a pencil, and it wasn’‘t unusual to be chased by lions or elephants on any given day. But for the months of the year when her family lived in the United States, this brave kid from the bush was cowed by the far more treacherous landscape of the preppy, private school social hierarchy.
Most girls Keena’’s age didn’‘t spend their days changing truck tires, baking their own bread, or running from elephants as they tried to do their schoolwork. They also didn’‘t carve bird whistles from palm nuts or nearly knock themselves unconscious trying to make homemade palm wine. But Keena’’s parents were famous primatologists who shuttled her and her sister between Philadelphia and Botswana every six months. Dreamer, reader, and adventurer, she was always far more comfortable avoiding lions and hippopotamuses than she was dealing with spoiled middle-school field hockey players.
In Keena’’s funny, tender memoir, Wild Life, Africa bleeds into America and vice versa, each culture amplifying the other. By turns heartbreaking and hilarious, Wild Life is ultimately the story of a daring but sensitive young girl desperately trying to figure out if there’’s any place where she truly fits in.
eir schoolwork. They also didn’‘t carve bird whistles from palm nuts or nearly knock themselves unconscious trying to make homemade palm wine. But Keena’’s parents were famous primatologists who shuttled her and her sister between Philadelphia and Botswana every six months. Dreamer, reader, and adventurer, she was always far more comfortable avoiding lions and hippopotamuses than she was dealing with spoiled middle-school field hockey players.
In Keena’’s funny, tender memoir, Wild Life, Africa bleeds into America and vice versa, each culture amplifying the other. By turns heartbreaking and hilarious, Wild Life is ultimately the story of a daring but sensitive young girl desperately trying to figure out if there’’s any place where she truly fits in.
eir schoolwork. They also didn’‘t carve bird whistles from palm nuts or nearly knock themselves unconscious trying to make homemade palm wine. But Keena’’s parents were famous primatologists who shuttled her and her sister between Philadelphia and Botswana every six months. Dreamer, reader, and adventurer, she was always far more comfortable avoiding lions and hippopotamuses than she was dealing with spoiled middle-school field hockey players.
In Keena’’s funny, tender memoir, Wild Life, Africa bleeds into America and vice versa, each culture amplifying the other. By turns heartbreaking and hilarious, Wild Life is ultimately the story of a daring but sensitive young girl desperately trying to figure out if there’’s any place where she truly fits in.
eir schoolwork. They also didn’‘t carve bird whistles from palm nuts or nearly knock themselves unconscious trying to make homemade palm wine. But Keena’’s parents were famous primatologists who shuttled her and her sister between Philadelphia and Botswana every six months. Dreamer, reader, and adventurer, she was always far more comfortable avoiding lions and hippopotamuses than she was dealing with spoiled middle-school field hockey players.
In Keena’’s funny, tender memoir, Wild Life, Africa bleeds into America and vice versa, each culture amplifying the other. By turns heartbreaking and hilarious, Wild Life is ultimately the story of a daring but sensitive young girl desperately trying to figure out if there’’s any place where she truly fits in.
ladelphia and Botswana every six months. Dreamer, reader, and adventurer, she was always far more comfortable avoiding lions and hippopotamuses than she was dealing with spoiled middle-school field hockey players.
In Keena’’s funny, tender memoir, Wild Life, Africa bleeds into America and vice versa, each culture amplifying the other. By turns heartbreaking and hilarious, Wild Life is ultimately the story of a daring but sensitive young girl desperately trying to figure out if there’’s any place where she truly fits in.
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This is such a wonderful – true – tale! I absolutely loved learning all about Baboon Camp and what it was like growing up in the middle of all the wild animals. Robert’s fearless nature served her well, whether she was taking a boat down hippo-infested waters, or navigating the all-too-treacherous cliques of high school, and the descriptions of both sides of her life were engrossing and endearing.
Keena Roberts, in this delightful coming-of-age memoir, describes a life divided. Her parents, both primatologists, are on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania and divide their time between field research and teaching. Where they go, they take their two daughters, including their wild life research stations in Kenya and Okavango Delta in Botswana. During their time in the States, their daughters attend the prestigious Shipley School in Bryn Mawr, PA, a suburb of Philadelphia and one of the poshest zip codes in America. Thus Keena trades the threats of wildlife in Africa for the threats of equally-vicious animals—the mean girls—at her school. I too have spent time in Africa and on Philadelphia’s Main Line. Roberts’s descriptions of these vastly different locales are spot on. Wild Life alternates between hilarity and tears as the reader watches Keena learn to meld her inner pirate-female-goddess-world-explorer with the teenager who simply wants to be part of her la-di-da school. Her strength and persistence pull her through, and you’ll enjoy reading the final chapters in which she pulls her life together. Loved this book.
I really enjoyed this book! If you follow my reviews, you probably already know that my taste in books is pretty eclectic. While I am willing to read anything that sounds interesting, I don’t read a lot of memoirs because they rarely appeal to me. I have zero desire to read about celebrities which eliminates a lot of memoirs. A story about a normal person doing extraordinary things is exactly the kind of thing I can get into so I went with my gut and gave this book a try and I am so glad that I did. Once I started reading this book, I didn’t want to stop and ended up reading the whole book in a single day.
Keena’s childhood was quite unique. Her parents studied animals in their own environment and took the whole family with them. She spent the first few years of her life in Kenya but most of her childhood was split between Botswana and Philadelphia. While in Baboon Camp in Botswana, Keena and her family lived in tents and had to watch out for lions, elephants, and buffalo. While in school, she had to deal with kids who liked being mean to anyone who was a little different. From her descriptions, I would have preferred life with the lions over going to high school as she did.
I loved getting to know Keena through her stories. There were times that I worried about her and feared that she would get hurt. I sympathized with her when she struggled to fit in at school. I was a little jealous of her when she described the days that she would spend the day in a tree reading while at camp. I was amazed by her ability to think clearly in highly stressful situations. The descriptions in the book are very well done and I felt like I had a good idea of what life was like at camp. I loved that there were a few photos scattered throughout the book to help illustrate some of the things discussed in the book.
I would recommend this book to others. I found this book to be very entertaining and I feel like I learned a few things in the process. I wouldn’t hesitate to read more from Keena Roberts in the future.
I received a review copy of this book from Grand Central Publishing.