eShop USA > Books > Chameleon Days: An American Boyhood in Ethiopia
Chameleon Days: An American Boyhood in Ethiopia
List Price: $12.00Our Price: $9.60 You Save: $2.40 (20%)Prices subject to change.
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Save $10.00 when you spend $50.00 or more on qualifying items offered by Amazon.com. Enter code BMLSAVES at checkout.
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 963.06092
EAN: 9780618658695
Edition: 1
ISBN: 0618658696
Label: Mariner Books
Manufacturer: Mariner Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 256
Publication Date: June 14, 2006
Publisher: Mariner Books
Studio: Mariner Books
Related Items: Featured Listmania!
Editorial Review:
In 1964, at the age of three, Tim Bascom is thrust into a world of eucalyptus trees and stampeding baboons when his family moves from the Midwest to Ethiopia. The unflinchingly observant narrator of this memoir reveals his missionary parents' struggles in a sometimes hostile country. Sent reluctantly to boarding school in the capital, young Tim finds that beyond the gates enclosing that peculiar, isolated world, conflict roils Ethiopian society. When secret riot drills at school are followed with an attack by rampaging students near his parents' mission station, Tim witnesses the disintegration of his family's African idyll as Haile Selassie's empire begins to crumble.Like Alexandra Fuller's Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, Chameleon Days chronicles social upheaval through the keen yet naive eyes of a child. Bascom offers readers a fascinating glimpse of missionary life, much as Barbara Kingsolver did in The Poisonwood Bible.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Ethiopian history
I have not read this yet, but have heard about it. We are glad to find any product that can help us understand our children's Ethiopian history and share with them as they get older.
Rating: - Sacrifice
These are the memories of the middle child of a couple who served as missionaries in Ethopia in the 1960's. Tim was 3 years old when he first arrived. The book covers his parents' tours of 5 years, making him 8 years old at the book's end.
It's hard to imagine such an observant 3 year old, but, this is a child living in a highly insecure environment. A perfect metaphor occurs at the start when Tim and his older brother arrive on Ethopian soil and run. Miraculously they stop ... Read More
Rating: - A different impression
Contrary to what other reviewers read in this book, I found it to be less an account of missionary experience (adequately written or not) than an account of being a very small child who was placed in a constant state of insecurity and anxiety by his parents. This was their choice of life, but they subjected their very young children to the consequences of their adult choices. That they placed their children in such constant disruption and uncertainty seems to me to be irresponsible. It seemed to me that ... Read More
Rating: - Chameleon Days
I was transported through time as I read Tim Bascom's Chameleon Days, and I have been connected to one of my daughters in a new way as she read the book and had a glimpse into an aspect of my personal history that I have rarely shared. Tim Bascom's Bingham Academy experience occurred a few years after my own, but there was little difference. As he described each facet of life at Bingham, I relived my own experiences and shuddered again to think that there was any reason big enough to send small children ... Read More
Rating:  - boyhood from one perspective
The account was very critical of so many aspects of his childhood that one wonders if his memories are quite accurate. Thankfully we've read many more positive accounts of childhood missionary experiences. Not a helpful read at all.
Related Categories:
| |
 |
