Savage Girls and Wild Boys

Stories of abandoned children and those children supposedly raised by animals have long fascinated us, as the legend of Romulus and Remus makes clear. More recent stories also capture the imagination. The Wild Boy of Aveyron, caught running naked in woods in provincial France in 1800, has been the subject of biography and fiction and the attempt by the physician Jean Itard to educate the boy formed the basis for a memorable film by Truffaut. The appearance of Kaspar Hauser in the streets of early 19th-century Nuremberg, after a mysterious 16-year imprisonment in a dark and tiny cellar, evoked fantastic tales of a lost prince and rightful heir cruelly shut away. He too was the subject of a film--a visionary and visually inventive masterpiece by the German director Werner Herzog. Michael Newton's Savage Girls and Wild Boys: a History of Feral Children tells these stories and many more like them--wolf-children in 1920s India, a Russian boy living on the streets of Moscow and scavenging with a pack of wild dogs, a boy brought up by monkeys in Uganda. Much more than just a frisson-inducing account of the weird and the bizarre, Savage Girls and Wild Boys is an ambitious exploration of what these stories (and our fascination with them) tell us about the shifting boundary between nature and civilisation.--Nick Rennison

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Well written and researched historical review - Rated
Highly recommended to anyone interested in the historical timeline of "wild children". Pulling together as much information as concievably possible and putting them all into an interesting while still historically accurate account could not have been easy, but has been achieved in this book. It kept me reading to the last page regretting any time that I had to put it down. Disturbing due to it's subject matter, yet stimulating for those interested in human reaction to unconventional circumstances. I suggest this one to anyone interested in the subject.

Well written yet lacking - Rated
I actually gave up on this book after a while as I was expecting to learn how the children had come to be living wild, how they survived and what living wild is like, unfortunately the book seems to give us endless stories and information regarding the "guardians" of the discovered and "rescued" feral children, but little or nothing actually about the children themselves and their time in the wild! Very disappointing.

A brilliant and moving book - Rated
Michael's Newton's book gives remarkably fresh insights into the cases of feral children, such as Genie whose story is well known to linguists. Moreover he uses a clever and beguiling cross disciplinary viewpoint that enables him to guide the reader through the true significance of these poignant stories. This is a brilliant and unique work, important in that it shows the great merit to be found at looking at cases using a wide lens, rather than the often tediously narrow scope of some academic writers. Newton's book will haunt you, but it will also educate and enlighten you.

Some fascinating and moving accounts - Rated
I bought this book because of a long-standing interest in the Kaspar Hauser case. Not only did I learn much that was new about Hauser but I was able to set his case in the context of a long history of 'feral' children before and since. Newton's book manages to avoid sensationalising his subject-matter, but his objectivity and breadth of contextualisation provide the reader with more than enough material to bring these stories alive. All this would be worthy enough, but what lifts the entire volume is the last case, that of Genie, kept in appalling conditions in a suburb of Los Angeles by her own overbearing father. Her life had been awful enough, but her subsequent treatment by self-seeking carers and an unfeeling bureaucracy shows how our attitudes to the rescue and re-education of these misfit kids have scarcely changed over the centuries. I finished this book better-informed about the subject and about humanity as a whole.

A great read - Rated
I enjoyed this book which taught me so much about many stories that I half remembered from years back. It's so well written that I kept reading late into the night. I strongly recommend it