Wild Life

September 1, 2019
Coming-of-age between a baboon research camp in Africa and a private school in Pennsylvania. The daughter of American professors and primatologists, Roberts spent her early years in Kenya in the Amboseli National Park, "close enough to the border with Tanzania to see Mount Kilimanjaro." A brief spell in Philadelphia left her feeling that her new home was "too big inside and not enough outside." When her parents moved the family back to a remote camp on a game reserve in Botswana, it signaled new adventure. The author's meticulous child's view stitches back-and-forth vignettes of a carefree girlhood among wildlife and a rougher existence at school in Pennsylvania. Refreshingly, Roberts avoids many common stereotypes of Africa; she clearly captures its many wonders as well as its perils, such as a mamba that she shot with an air rifle. Lush descriptions linger over flora and fauna, providing an immersive narrative that will have readers admiring the author's mostly charming adventures, from piloting a boat at age 10 to joining her parents on their baboon watch. Roberts also shows us the everyday rigors of living in tents and enduring the oppressive heat, which often left them simply seeking shade from 9 to 5, when "it was too hot to function." Recounting her time in the U.S., the author emphasizes her feelings of displacement and difficulties navigating many rite-of-passage moments. The chapters about high school turn more serious, and the pace slows as Roberts turns her attention to familiar adolescent pains. She weaves broader topics, such as the HIV crisis in Botswana, into a later chapter, and while she longs for the days at baboon camp, "American Keena has given me some important experiences as well." The journey's end is elegiac yet hopeful: "The wardrobe door may have closed on Narnia, but that doesn't mean the story is over." This episodic, warm exploration of identity and culture is both wide-eyed and surprisingly wise.

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September 30, 2019
Roberts’s refreshing, upbeat debut is a rollicking memoir of girlhood adventure and matter-of-fact bravery. Raised by university professors and primatologists who conduct field research half the year, Roberts straddled two worlds: the African bush and a Philadelphia private school. When she was eight, her family moved to Baboon Camp, a research outpost in a watery delta of Botswana, where she learned to read the freshness of leopard, impala, and lion prints to determine “how careful I needed to be.” At 10 she piloted a motorboat on a two-hour mission past elephants, hippos, and crocodiles and is rewarded with a beer. Roberts writes with humor and kindness throughout, especially as she examines white privilege and the cultural differences of the Botswanans. Back in the U.S. she missed “the comforting familiarity of hyenas whooping and zebras calling,” and objected to going to class “when I heard that school was an inside activity.” Attending school in Philadelphia as an avid fantasy reader, she shied in the face of bullies: “America was not a safe place for me... I had to lie low and let the danger pass.” When she was accepted to Harvard, a competitive classmate said, “You don’t deserve to go,” calling her upbringing “an unfair hook... to get something you haven’t earned.” Resilient and resourceful, Roberts celebrates an unorthodox life in this endearing memoir.

Starred review from October 15, 2019
Imagine growing up in Kenya, in the bush, where your parents study monkeys, until, at age six, you're thrust into the totally different environment of an elite private school in Philadelphia. After a disastrous dance recital, where Roberts was ridiculed for dancing to a Kenyan pop song, the family moved to the Okavango delta in Botswana and Roberts decided she had to start acting like a grownup. Tales of being homeschooled in camp while her parents did field work, guarding frozen chickens from baboons, reading science fiction, doing laundry, and shooting a black mamba alternate with excerpts from Roberts' journal. When she returns to school halfway through the sixth grade, with social groups already set, her previous best friend is now the queen of the sixth grade, and Roberts knows she won't fit in. The contrast between life in the bush and life in the city, and of how Roberts learns to balance her two selves?the girl in the delta who can do everything adults do and the weirdo who doesn't feel safe in America?is a terrific coming-of-age story. Full of details about field research and bar mitzvahs, what to do when you meet dangerous wildlife or dangerous mean girls, and how reading was her salvation, Roberts' fish-out-of-water story is impossible to put down.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)