I only got through the first chapter of this book and decided that it was not for my grand-daughter. She is named Alexandria and she was hoping that her name reflected royalty as her sister's name does. Her sister was named after Queen Guinevere of "King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table" fame.
Barbara Bear is not an author of young people's books as she claims to be. She can't write English. She writes American.
The pages of the book aren't numbered (!)however, on the very first page of chapter 1 we see this..."Her stomach grumble for food and she spoke to it as if it...". A printer's error perhaps? Then on the next page..."....but moved on confidently that she would reach a village....", why Barbara uses an adverb there confounds me and is obviously incorrect. A little further down the page reveals this...."...she gave thought of what aggressive creatures may be inhabit the bemired river." Another printer's error?
Then just a little further..."...she virtually outmaneuvered the hostile attacker in his ceaseless plunder of clenching Alexandria between his deadly jaws." I can explain to my grand-daughter the differences in American spelling of manoeuvre and our English/Australian version but I'm lost to explain the use of the word plunder incorrectly used in this sentence.
The next page (which I shall number three) refers to a crocodile attack where she writes..."The lacerations from his talons were deep and she felt...". I can only presume that South American crocodiles unlike those in the rest of the world attack with their feet rather than their jaws. Let's call that "poetic licence" but what can I call this gem? "She collected many...for other wounds she may procure on her journey." Just the sort of thing one would like to procure, more wounds. Wrong word useage again Barbara Bear.
The mistakes are endless and I've only reached page three.
The Zimbabwe tribe however, was the icing on the cake. What they were doing there in the Congo would be just too hard to explain to my eight year old. Well I can't explain it to be honest. Are there two Zimbabwes in the world or just the one in Africa that we used to call Rhodesia?
It's as though Barbara Bear has no idea how to construct a sentence and worse still she's obsessed with using a Thesaurus incomprehensibly.
An amateurish attempt at writing a book, to say the least and God forbid, there are sequels.