T.O.H.P. Burnham Free Library (Essex)

Wild life, dispatches from a childhood of baboons and button-downs, Keena Roberts

eng

technical information on music

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biography

Wild life

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1132916290

Keena Roberts

dispatches from a childhood of baboons and button-downs

"Years before anyone had heard of the movie Mean Girls, it was real life for Keena Roberts. Raised by primatologist parents, she and her sister spent most of their time in a rustic island camp in a national wildlife preserve in Botswana, tracking baboons through the bush as even they themselves were tracked by lions, treed by buffalo, or chased by elephants. Whether she was shooting visiting snakes in the family's laundry sink or solo-piloting a motorboat at age ten through a river full of angry hippos, Keena grew up with a sharp awareness of the intricate ways that danger and beauty coexist in the natural world and a deep love for the wild African landscape she called home. But once a year, she and her family had to make a return trip to America, where for several months she had to hone her survival skills in a much more treacherous environment -- the social hierarchy of a ritzy Philadelphia private school. She and her peers were flummoxed by one another: not only did she not understand the appeal of the latest 1990s pop songs or TV shows, she had shaggy hair and too many pocketknives and hated wearing shoes. Dreamer, reader, and adventurer, this young woman from the bush was far more comfortable dodging real-life predators than navigating the cliques of spoiled high-school field-hockey players."--, Provided by publisher

adult

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