Beautifully written and lovingly told, Scott’s book has the makings to be “Out of Africa” meets “Running With Scissors”

- Marcus Malbry, The New York Times

Read the full review of Twenty Chickens for a Saddle on the New York Times website

... such a quietly bravura performance that it is difficult to believe this is Scott's first book.The sounds, sights, scents and textures of Botswana tumble from her pages with unhurried ease, conjuring an Enid Blyton-esque adventure of a childhood and the colourful, life-filled characters it embraced.

- Kate Colquhoun, The Daily Telegraph
Read the full review of Twenty Chickens for a Saddle on the Daily Telegraph website

... while Scott does come in contact with some of Southern Africa’s tragedies... this book is much more an account of an unusual, entertaining upbringing than the more expected Africa story written by a white author that asks the question, How do I belong here? It’s the story of an African childhood, but it’s a story that former children anywhere can relate to.

- Audrey van Buskirk, The Portland Tribune
Read the full review of Twenty Chickens for a Saddle on the Portland Tribune website

"...a fabulous read, rollicking, good-humoured... a worthy successor to The Flame Trees of Thika".

- Alexandra Fuller, The Globe and Mail
Read the full review of Twenty Chickens for a Saddle on The Globe and Mail website

Happy stories are hard to tell, but Scott succeeds in this engaging recreation of a child's Botswana, apolitical and Eden-like. She has no sordid revelations, no shocking surprises—just a raconteur's talent for making any story she tells interesting.

- Publishers Weekly
Read the full review of Twenty Chickens for a Saddle on the Publishers Weekly website

Fresh and enjoyable… Scott does more than simply record her African adventures. She tackles the difficult issue of race, revealing a shift in white attitudes across the generations… Scott’s great strength is to remind us that southern Africa has so many different stories.

- Susan Williams, The Independent
Read the full review of Twenty Chickens for a Saddle on The Independent's website

"an enchanting book... eminently readable and deceptively ambitious..." Willamette Week

"[A] beautiful and loving portrait" - The Boston Globe

"...a palpable tribute to the country where she enjoyed a remarkable childhood." - The Financial Times

"unusual and captivating...Robyn Scott is also a wonderful writer, with the ability to retrieve essential details from her memory and hone them. Her memoir is a rich tapestry of her Botswana experiences and her eccentric but interesting family. What happened to them is truly a story worth telling." - The Vancouver Sun

"Scott beautifully evokes the gentle country she fell in love with ... the magic continues." The New Zealand Herald

How refreshing to read a memoir of a magical childhood where parents are loved and respected. Robyn Scott proves you do not have to come from a dysfunctional family to tell a great story. And this book is all about stories. Twenty-eight chapters of stories of three generations and the lives they have chosen to live in one of Africa's most beautiful countries.

"A colorful, occasionally shocking fish-out-of-water memoir." Kirkus Reviews

"She achieves a rare balance in producing a book which is eminently readable and full of humour, whilst allowing the pain of individuals and of a country the focus it deserves... her wit survives even in the toughest of circumstances. A truly wonderful book." - The Book Bag

"utterly engaging and well-crafted ... there is a poignancy that weaves through the triumphs and heartbreaks that is very moving." - Kate Dennill, The Citizen, Johannesburg

"An autobiography such as this could easily have become cloying and self-indulgent but Scott is a funny and acutely observant writer and it is a credit to the skills of this first time author that she succeeds in interesting us in her family, giving them all their own peculiar identity and persuading us to come along for the ride." - Anthony Stidolph, The Witness.