Journey to The River Sea book summary and review

 Check out my Journey to The River Sea book summary and review that I created to help you understand the basics of this great book. Maya, or When Miss Minton Through Her Corset Into the Amazon (Journey to the River C, 2001) is a children's book by Eva Ibtson. The book was a best seller in the United States.

A German translation by Sabine Ludwig, published in 2003 by Cecilie Dressler Verlag; It was published in 2006 by Deutsche Taschenbuch Verlag. Hörverlag published a reading edition in 2005 as an audio book, read by Sandra Schweitou.

Journey to The River Sea book summary :

England 1910: Maya has been living in a boarding school since her parents died in an accident. One day he gets the message that distant relatives from Brazil want to take him with them. Maya sailed to South America with his governess, Miss Minton, who seemed a bit annoyed at first but soon became a good friend.

On the journey, he meets his son Clovis, who, together with a group of traveling actors, wants to play The Little Lord in the Manaus Theater, in which he plays the leading role. As soon as they arrive in Manaus, Maya's dreams of a happy future are shattered: the Carter family and above all the twins Gwendolyn and Beatrice become unsympathetic contemporaries who only take Maya with them to make a living.

However, Maya soon meets Finn, a half-Native American boy who has been living alone by a lake since his father died. Finn's father, the scientist Bernhard Taverner, knew Miss Minton, who worked as a maid in Westwood until she was fired for reading too much in the library. Finn has lived in the Amazon since he was born.

But now his rich, aristocratic grandfather wants to take him to his estate in England, since Finn is his only heir; Private detectives are already looking for him in Manaus. With a trick, the children manage to get detectives to bring Clovis, who is aspiring to his native England, instead of Finn as Westwood's successor.

Finn can finally do what he's always wanted to do: he goes in search of the Janti tribe in his mother's "Arabella" boat, named after Miss Minton. At his father's request. Things get even worse in Manaus: when Miss Minton plans to leave the Carters to befriend Maya with a Russian family, Carter's house catches fire.

Maya has a great adventure with Finn because she feels abandoned by Miss Minton, not knowing that Miss Minton wanted to take her with her. Miss Minton and her friend, a professor at the Museum of Natural History in Manaus, hijacked Carter's ship and quickly followed. When they met the two children, Miss Minton dropped her corset at Amazon.

Shortly after, the four meet up with a Native American tribe that was Finn's mother, and they decide to stay. However, his fate did not last long, as Maya was wanted by the water police. Miss Minton and you are forced to return to England.

Finn joins them because Clovis is in trouble at his new home. However, these questions are ultimately contentious because Finn agrees to Clovis as Westwood's heir and everything also ends well for Maya and Miss Minton: they are allowed to return to Brazil.

Eva Ibtson wrote the first book after her husband's death when Maya or Miss Minton threw her corset into the Amazon. He loved nature and the jungle, so he built realistic plots in the jungle and dedicated the book to him.


When Maya or Miss Minton threw her corset on Amazon in 2001, she was awarded the Nestle Smarties Book Award, was shortlisted for the CILIP Carnegie Medal and was nominated for the Children's Whitebread Award. It was also awarded in Germany: 7/2003 children's and youth book list (RB/SR) 4/2003 | 7 best books for young readers (DeutschlandRadio / Focus).

Journey to The River Sea book review :

I’ve been wanting to read some Ebotson for ages, but this is the first time I’ve been able to get my hands on it. It won't, I'm sure, will end. Journey to the River Sea tells the story of Maya Fielding, an orphaned girl whose quiet, boring life ends at a gentleman's boarding school in London when, one day, word comes from her aunt and uncle in South America.

 They want to adopt him, and - apparently - give him the house he has been missing since the accident that claimed his parents' life. Immediately, Maya dreams of her happy reunion with her family, when the girls in her class don't waste time telling her about a terrible foreign disease that could infect her in the rainforest.

A governess - the absolutely fictional Miss Minton - is quickly assigned to accompany Maya on the long and perilous journey, and, full of hope, they set off. Along the way, Maya meets many new and interesting people, including Clovis, a young boy of her own age who plays with a cast.

They have a booking in a town not far from where Maya will be staying and she promises to come and see him perform. By the time they arrive, Maya and Miss Minton are bedridden and tired, but amazed at the beauty of the scenery around them.

Imagine their fears, then, when they reach the Carters (Meyer's relatives), they find that they are diligently killing every piece of potential exotic wildlife, treating their Indian slaves terribly and making perfect 'English' in every case. Trying to. '

Life in the rainforest instead of embracing their new life. Maya begins to realize that the perfect life she dreamed of with her aunts, uncles, and (absolutely, brilliantly disgusting) twin cousins ​​may not be everything she hoped for.

Meanwhile, two strangely dressed black investigators arrive in the "old country" from England in search of a long-lost heir apparent and a luxurious country estate. They think he's lost in the rainforest, and they're told to bring him back at any cost. But it wasn't until he met Maya, and the kids in them, almost as horribly as they could, that the investigators would come.

I like this book for many reasons. In the approximate order of preference, these are: Miss Minton, Maya, Setting, Carter and their stupidity / greed / obscenity / general horror, and the fact that the book is rich in plot and subplot, they are all a layered reading experience. Of course, writing and dialogue and general characterization are all spot-on, too; This is a quality part of storytelling.

The only small thing that bothered me was that Maya was a little more perfect, very universally beloved (except by the terrible Carters, but we know how bad they are) and very idealistic, but I loved her too. I admire her politeness, her sense of justice, her concern and sympathy for others, her instinctive drive to respect her environment and the other people who live there, and her wide eyes for the new landscape where she finds herself.

I loved her hope too - she never gave up hope for a better future, and it was beautiful. However, it would be nice to see him get a little angry just to keep things in balance.

Miss Minton - Good. I want to be her when I grow up. There is a scene near the end of the book when she, after years of resistance (because of sophistication and value and so on) removes her corset and allows herself to breathe properly in the hot, humid forest and I feel happy. He is loving, kind, courageous, completely devoted to Maya, intelligent, wealthy and irresistible - just like me. In my imagination.

I loved Clovis too. If there's ever a character whose cheek I want to squeeze, he's the one. I loved his struggles with his altered body and voice which could be the last spell of his career as a curvy little boy on stage and the gradual unveiling of his 'original story',

Which was very touching and I'm sure, quite realistically, I enjoyed Maya's relationship with Finn, and I like Carters to explore in Ibotson's behavior and how they abused workers in their rubber plantations and their short-sighted, destructive approach to forest resources. Got something. There’s a lot of ‘text’ here, which doesn’t feel like text; Lots of quiet lament for the death of the beauty of the natural world, which sat uncomfortably with me.