about the book
Every summer that she can remember since her parents’ divorce, fourteen-year-old Sophie has spent time with her mother in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Though she is biracial, half-American, half-Congolese, she feels like an outcast. Working with her mother at a bonobo chimp sanctuary helps to eliminate this feeling, especially when she takes on the care of an orphaned infant chimp called Otto.
Sophie had rescued him from a poacher- vendor, who sells rare animals, and the two bond almost immediately. Otto follows Sophie like chicks follow a hen. The responsibility Sophie feels for Otto is something she has never felt before, and it takes her mind off her own loneliness in the Congo.
However, the Congo is a dangerous place, for more than just its jungle and wild animals. There are poachers. There are rebels armed with guns and knives, and they think it is time for a revolution. The bonobo sanctuary is attacked. The chimps and the workers are scattered.
Sophie and Otto must head into the jungle by themselves. To survive, Sophie calls upon instincts she never knew she had to live off the land and defend herself and her beloved Otto from all harm that comes.
Will they survive? Where will they live?
about the author
Eliot Schrefer was born in Chicago during the 1978 blizzard. His dad is American, but his mother is British; he has both an American and a British passport because of it. His dad changed jobs a lot throughout Eliot’s childhood, and so Eliot lived in many different places: Colombia, Norwich, Cheshire, Connecticut, Santa Rosa, California, Clearwater, Florida, and Maryland.
His favorite color is yellow.
Eliot started on his writing career in the winter of 2004, when one night over dinner with friends he said, offhandedly, “If anyone had a million dollars and health and free time, he/she would become a novelist.” He had assumed that everyone would share this sentiment. They did not. Blank faces.
So Eliot realized that his aspiration, the thing he could do if he had the power to do whatever he wanted, was to become a writer. So he did! His first book, Glamorous Disasters came out shortly after this realization; it’s about his time living in Harlem working off his financial aid debt by tutoring snotty rich kids on Park Avenue, New York. He got into YA writing when he met the famous writer David Levithan, who gave him a cool-sounding title for a book that he wanted Eliot to write. It was The School for Dangerous Girls.
Eliot doesn’t have a million dollars, but he is in pretty good health, and he has forced himself to have time free—so his aspirations have come true!
Sources:
Author website
Author interview : Scholastic
Also by Eliot Schrefer:
Threatened. Scholastic. 2014.
The Deadly Sister. Scholastic. 2010.
The School for Dangerous Girls. Scholastic. 2009.
The New Kid. Simon & Schuster. 2007.
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