Jummy at the River School

By: Sabine Adeyinka

Narrated by: Elizabeth Ayodele

Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins

Publisher's summary

Jummy has won a place at the River School, the finest girls' boarding school in Nigeria.

Nothing can dampen her spirits, not even when she learns that her best friend Caro won’t be joining her.

By the Shine-Shine River, school is everything Jummy dreamt of, with friendly new girls, midnight feasts and sporting prizes—but when Caro suddenly arrives at the school to work, not to learn, Jummy must bring all her friends together to help.

- From a fantastic new talent in middle-grade contemporary fiction, Sabine Adeyinka, based on her own experience of attending boarding school in Nigeria.

- A joyful, glorious collision of classic boarding-school story with vibrant 1990s Nigeria.

- Irrepressible Jummy investigates an intriguing mystery as her best friend from home turns up at the school.

©2022 Sabine Adeyinka (P)2022 Audible, Ltd

good

good book with lots of high points. performance was also good. would recommend to friends

Beautiful story and performance

A lovely story about true friendship and willingness to do the right thing. Also about them work and work ethic for the greater good. Engaging and suspenseful, I finished in 3 days!

Enjoyable

I have had Nigerian friends. This was wonderful to get a glimpse of life, and see that girls boarding school have things in common the world over.

Heartwarming with Good Morals

This was a wonderful story about a young girl who gets into the school of her dreams. There, she meets new friends, and learns valuable lessons about doing a job well, teamwork, overcoming wealth inequality, and sticking up for her friends.

The whole story is uplifting as Jummy learns about herself and the world, makes some mistakes, and grows as a person.

The story’s setting also helps readers learn about Nigeria and Nigerian culture.

Highly recommend for grade school or early junior high readers.

OUTSTANDING AUDIO Production!

Filled with descriptive scenes and sound effects, this Award Winning Children's book was both educational and interesting.... even for me, a 65 yr retired educator. The vocabulary is diverse and easily inspiring for middle school age or gifted primarily schoolers.

Nostalgic

As a Nigerian born and partly raised, this takes me back to when I completed my secondary school in Nigeria. Everything I listened to in this book was exactly the experience and more. At the time, I was in senior secondary so this gave me a snapshot of what the junior secondary girls were experiencing. This book is quite extraordinary. I wish there were more books that frame our Nigerian lived lives like this. ❤️

Excellent and encouraging!

The story was well written and encouraging. The description throughout had me easily envisioning the school. I enjoyed the sound effects added to the narration which was beautifully read.

Stunning surprise of loveliness

I started this book because I liked the cover art; it is bright
and joyful
and bursting with life.

And so is the story within.

As the story unfolded, I realized that a Nigerian girls’ boarding school was coming to life in my mind, as were the students.

I felt a tug of familiarity, an echo of my life fifty years ago in New England when a girls’ boarding school was my home.

Some of us start as pipsqueaks who are awed by the power wielded by our elders.

And then our awed wonder begins to get tarnished as we see little shortcuts taken here, little prevarications made there, the administration looking the other way here, everybody over there seeming heart-blind to unkindness and casual cruelty.


So I felt the story’s plot most plausible, and the situations that transition the story from one trajectory to another were believable in how they totter…
…and topple
…and SHIFT with uncanny grace to pave a road toward hope and fairness.

We all struggle with the mix of marbles that makes us human:
strengths, weaknesses, challenges, gifts.
With that in mind, I treasure the rich array of character traits that are so effortlessly woven into each person in the story.
Echoes of real life come back to me without turning familiar people into caricatures. And when a story can crisp up the recognition of forces at work in our daily lives,
…we call it art.



Now to your question-prompts:

1) WHAT I LIKED/
DISLIKED?

LIKE:

Above I speak of how I cherish the relatability of teen-year struggles, as they are previews of what we see in each decade of life.

DISLIKE:

ONE WISH:
If only there were a little vocabulary list of the fruits mentioned…and of the varieties of cloth referred to; I would so LOVE to be able to search out a picture of them, learn the stories and histories attached to them.
SO….
It. Would. Be. Spectacularly. FUN!!! to learn more about various items and culture-ways spoken of in the experience of this story.
AND…
Is there some way you could offer wee Easter-egg nuggets (links?) that a curious mind could follow in hope of looking further into this vibrant society?

SECOND WISH:
When I READ a book, I get to see the spelling.

With an audiobook, however, unless the introductory section reveals the spelling of characters’ names, I find it tricky to grasp some names. This is exponentially more difficult when the names of characters are absolutely new to me and arise from the sound-clusters of a whole different language; my ear is not quick to not recognize each one.
Nor can they be easily distinguished from each other.

Unless unusual names are VASTLY different from each other, distinguishing them as events unfold can be tricky.
(Might you offer a Cast of Characters list?)

But this is a minor detail that will become less an issue each successive time I listen to it.
This book is delightful and thought-provoking; it has been well-worth these rare moments of my being alive this day.


2)
RECOMMENDED AUDIENCE:
Human….
Anyone
who IS a teen…
who HAS EVER BEEN a teen,
who is within five years of BECOMING
a teen…

3)
WHY THIS RATING:

Truth in the story’s fabric;
Truth in the beautifully-made garment cut
from that fabric;
Truth in the spirit animating those garments
with life.

Created here is
A lovely shadow-pageant of dark and light.
Thought-provoking.
Art.

Escape for a few hours into a world of color and simpler times

YA yet easily enjoyed by adults. A familiar story line. In these chaotic times this book it nice to have a coming of age story without violence, sexual assault, drugs.
The use of music, vivid descriptions of food, clothing and scenery puts you right there with the Jummy.

Engaging story about school life and friendship

The cover art drew me in first. Then the promise of a story of boarding school steeped in nostalgia.

I thoroughly enjoyed the story and being immersed in the world of Jummy and her friends at River School and am excited to share this with my daughter. I hope there will be more stories to look forward to.

The reading was done very well, however there were several Yoruba words not pronounced properly or with an incorrect intonation. Besides that, the audio book version was highly engaging and I recommend this book.