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Book Summary and Reviews of Child of the Jungle by Sabine Kuegler

Child of the Jungle by Sabine Kuegler

Child of the Jungle

The True Story of a Girl Caught Between Two Worlds

by Sabine Kuegler

  • Critics' Consensus:
  • Published:
  • Mar 2007, 272 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

Sabine Kuegler's childhood was far from typical. The child of German linguists and missionaries, she spent her youth living among the Fayu tribe in the most remote jungles of West Papua, Indonesia. There, as her family struggled for acceptance among the tightly knit and fiercely loyal community, Sabine spent her time swimming with crocodiles, shooting poisonous spiders with arrows, and chewing on pieces of bat-wing in place of gum. And she was happy. It wasn't until the age of 17 when her world was upended that Sabine experienced true fear for the first time. She was sent off to a boarding school in Switzerland and forced to confront the culture clash of modern Western society--giving her plenty of reason to be afraid. This is her remarkable true story.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Young readers, and anthropologists, too, will find this account of a most unusual childhood engrossing and will root for the survival of the Fayu." - PW.

"An earnest tale of an idyllic childhood in a missionary family in Papua New Guinea, this German best seller (Dschungelkind) has touched the hearts of readers around the world." - Library Journal.

"The prose is elementary, even plodding-there's nothing lyrical here, and at times, it feels like an account of childhood written for children. Exotic, but not engaging." - Kirkus.

This information about Child of the Jungle was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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