Meet The Protagonist

The protagonist of the book (Journey to the River Sea ) is Maia Fielding. Maia is the type of girl who is studious and honest and a good academic. She is thoughtful and sweet and a little bit mischievous. If she has a fault, it is that she is perhaps too trusting and too optimistic. When she hears that she does indeed have family, and that they are happy for her to come and live with them, she is excited. But when it becomes clear she is heading for the Amazon, she becomes a bit nervous.

Physical Description- Maia has a pale triangular face and widely spaced dark eyes. Her ears, laid bare by the heavy rope of black hair, gave her an 'unprotected' look. Some people think Maia is pretty but Maia doesn't find it so. Fair and curly haired and pretty was what she longed to be. (Chapter 1 Pg. 7)

Personality- Maia is a clever, friendly, nice child and a brave one too. Maia is brave because she had fought hard to overcome the devastating blow of her parents' death in a train crash in Egypt two years ago. Maia had wept night after night under her pillow trying not to wake her friends up since she lives in the school along with others. Maia is thought to be nice by the school's headmaster and her sister, her guardian, her governess, Finn and Clovis. They think that if good fortune was to come her way, there was no who deserved it more than Maia. Maia is also friendly as she makes friends quickly. First with a homesick child actor whom she meets on the boat to Manaus, then with a mysterious Indian boy and finally with her governess. Maia is clever seeing she can read, write and speak English exceedingly proficiently as well as in maths. Overall, Maia is an attractive child. (Pg. 5, 7, 19, 50, 51)

Graphic Citation:

http://www.examiner.com/images/blog/EXID27365/images/Journey-to-the-River-Sea.jpg

The Start Of A Journey

Passage that describes the journey from the book:

(Maia Talking- Page 11 of Chapter One)

"When I go I shall travel on a boat of the Booth Line and it will take four weeks to go across the Atlantic, and then when I get to Brazil I still have to travel a thousand miles along the river between trees and lean over the water, and there will be scarlet birds and sandbanks and creatures like big guinea pigs called capa . . . capybaras which you can tame." "And after another two weeks on the boat I shall reach the city of Manaus, which is a beautiful place with a theater with a green and golden roof, and shops and hotels just like here, because the people who grew rubber out there became very rich and so they could build such a place even in the middle of the jungle . . . . And that is where I shall be met by Mr. and Mrs. Carter and by Beatrice and Gwendolyn-" "And after that I don't know, but it’s going to be all right."

This passage explains the journey Maia is going to travel in her own point of view. I think this passage explains her journey very well as she herself is telling it in her perspective. The passage clearly describes her journey from London to Brazil including how she is going to get there and what she might see there. Maia's journey is for the most part on the river and she would be on a boat because of that. This is an important description to the journey of Maia because it tells exactly what she is going to do and the route she is going to take to get to the journeys' end. However, this passage from the book does not illustrate what happens after she reaches Brazil. Maia would also be going through a personal journey inside herself. She is leaving her so called home in London to live with her relatives in Brazil so that is a personal challenge for her as well.

Graphic Citation:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_GNiAc2Inhg/TLmgNfNzChI/AAAAAAAAAGM/QoIAkDij5c/s1600/12134

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