Wild life : dispatches from a childhood of baboons and button-downs / Keena Roberts.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Roberts, Keena, author.

Contributor:

Hiram G. Haney Fund.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Americans.

Philadelphia (Pa.)--Biography.

Philadelphia (Pa.).

Botswana.

Pennsylvania--Philadelphia.

Roberts, Keena--Childhood and youth.

Roberts, Keena.

Americans--Botswana--Biography.

Genre:

Biographies.

Autobiographies.

Physical Description:

ix, 290 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Grand Central Publishing, 2019.

Summary:

"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 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"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Prologue. Gorillaman and fifty tiny ballerinas

The first three times I almost died

A dead chicken and an offer of marriage

Don't bring your beer shirt to show and tell

The African night is long and dark

Snakes and cakes

Stranded in Xamashuro

100 cases of beer and a man-eating crocodile

Pearl Jam and other things I didn't know

Can we swim away from this party?

Baboon identification and other hidden talents

There are no doctors here

The elf princess plays lacrosse

Finding the moon on Earth

High school waterhole

The hippo situation is grim

One unhappy cat

We're just going to make a run for it

The leopard attack

The infection rate reaches 36%

I am American

The other spot at Harvard

A bear just doing his bear thing

Extreme driving in a broken Toyota

Blood and dust and Botswana sky

Epilogue. Goodbye, Narnia.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Hiram G. Haney Fund.

ISBN:

9781538745151

1538745151

OCLC:

1108787064

Publisher Number:

99982703317