What is Friday Firsts?
The first line can make or break a reader’s interest. Just how well did the author pull you in to the story with their first sentence? To participate in this weekly book meme is extremely easy.
- Grab the book you are currently reading and open to the first page.
- Write down the first sentence in the first paragraph. (If you want to use 2-3 sentences, that is okay but limit it to the very beginning.)
- Create a blog post with this information. (Make sure to include the title & author of the book you are using. Even an ISBN helps!)
- Did this first sentence help draw you into the story? Why or why not?
- Come back to this blog post, hosted on WellReadReviews.com and let me know where to find your Friday Firsts!
That’s it
Here is my Friday Firsts:
The Girl with No Name by Marina Chapman
“Stop the car, John. I want to get out!” Hearing my mother’s words, my father glanced in the rear-view mirror and skidded to a halt without saying a word.
When I attended Florida Gulf Coast University for my bachelors in education, there was a time during our child development courses that we learned about feral children. I had known all about feral animals, but children? It was new to me, though incredibly interesting (and depressing.)
Feral children are children who are deprived of normal human interactions in their formative years. Some learn to survive on their own, but the majority survive with the help of other animals such as wolves (Romulus and Remes), dogs, chickens, and in this example — monkeys.
The Girl with No Name is a controversial novel written by and about the feral child raised by monkeys, Marina Chapman. The story is so incredibly unbelievable that there are many that question her honesty about her upbringing. Many people feel that many details were possibly embellished to sound more bizarre, for a good story.
None the less — sometimes I think that many people call to question something they just do not understand. It’s easy to dismiss something that they have never, nor have heard of anyone, ever experienced. Because of my fascination (thanks to FGCU) on child development and feral children, I am incredibly excited to pick up this book — embellished or not.
The Girl with No Name Book Summary:
The poignant story of a girl who overcomes unique hardship and deprivation – growing up with a troop of capuchin monkeys – to find ultimate redemption.
In 1954, in a remote mountain village in South America, a little girl was abducted. She was four years old. Marina Chapman was stolen from her housing estate and then abandoned deep in the Colombian jungle. That she survived is a miracle. Two days later, half-drugged, terrified, and starving, she came upon a troop of capuchin monkeys. Acting entirely on instinct, she tried to do what they did: she ate what they ate and copied their actions, and little by little, learned to fend for herself.
So begins the story of her five years among the monkeys, during which time she gradually became feral; she lost the ability to speak, lost all inhibition, lost any real sense of being human, replacing the structure of human society with the social mores of her new simian family. But society was eventually to reclaim her. At age ten she was discovered by a pair of hunters who took her to the lawless Colombian city of Cucuta where, in exchange for a parrot, they sold her to a brothel. When she learned that she was to be groomed for prostitution, she made her plans to escape. But her adventure wasn’t over yet…
In the vein of “Slumdog Millionaire” and “City of God,” this rousing story of a lost child who overcomes the dangers of the wild and the brutality of the streets to finally reclaim her life will astonish readers everywhere.
Thank you for checking out my Friday Firsts.
