Journey to River Sea by Eva Ibbotson

Maia is an orphan who lives in a boarding school in England. Until Mr. Murray, Maia´s lawyer and the person who is in charge of her, founds her relatives in Brazil who seem to be willling to take her in, called the Carters. Along with her new governess, Miss Minton, Maia goes by boat to Manaus a city from Brazil, where the Carters live. On the ship, she meets a boy named Clovis King, who is traveling with an acting troop. He wants to go back to England, but the Goodleys (the acting troop) won't let him. Maia promises him she will do her best to try and see his play once she arrives in Brazil.
Rainforest Sounds
When Maia arrives at Manaus, she realizes the Carters aren't as kind as she had expected. Beatrice and Gwendolyn, the twins, who are her age and seem to be extraordinarily conceited and cocky and not the least bit active, hate Maia and are horrible to her. So when time comes for Maia to see Clovis's play, the twins had lied that all the tickets had been sold and they had not bought one for her. But as Maia really wanted to see Clovis, she goes by herself to the theatre.
Later, Maia meets a half- Indian, half-English boy called Finn Taverner. Some private detectives are looking for him because his grandfather wants Finn to be the heir of Westwood, the castle of the Taverner family. Finn doesn't want to go because he wants to go up the amazon and search for a tribe called the Xanti, to which her mother belonged to when she was alive. Later, Maia introduces Finn to Clovis and she suggests that Clovis pretends to be Finn because Clovis wants to go back to England and Finn wants to stay in Brazil.

The author
Eva Ibbotson (born 1925, Vienna, Austria) is a British novelist specialized in juvenile fiction. She won the Nestlé Smarties Book Prize for Journey to the River Sea, a book which reflects her love of nature. Ibbotson wrote this book in 2001 in honor of her husband (who had died just before she wrote it) and was a former naturalist. According to her, the book had been in her head for years before she actually wrote it.
Why I liked this book
I think this book was very exciting and entertaining. It was very gripping and made me want to read on and on. It was extremely interesting because I learnt a lot of things from South America and its culture from the point of view of a girl about my age to whom of that is unknown. I loved the amazing descriptions because they where so good that you could basically feel, see and smell what was being told. It was an incredible book!
CPA 8W