Customer Reviews

Savage Girls and Wild Boys: A History of Feral Children

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There are many myths about abandoned children who become heroes, like Moses and Oedipus. These had the good fortune to be found by humans and raised by humans. But there are other myths, some as modern as Tarzan, about abandoned children who are taken up by animals. Romulus and Remus were raised by wolves, and Semiramis, who founded Babylon, was raised by birds. Such stories seem to be of intense interest to humans, and when a real "wild child" is produced, it can cause curiosity, sympathy, and sensation. The stories of six such wild children are recounted in _Savage Girls and Wild Boys: A History of Feral Children_ (Thomas Dunne Books) by Michael Newton. The individual stories, full of contradiction and wonder, are all intriguing, and the responses to the children and their fate have something to tell us not so much about feral children, but about ourselves. These poor children lacked human contact when they should have been learning how to talk, eat, and behave; the result of such deprivation brings up profound questions about what language means, and what it is to be human.

Peter, the "Wild Boy" came naked out of the forests of Hanover, and became an attraction at the court of George I. He lived on for sixty years, described in 1751 as "more of the Ouran Outang species than of the human." He could say only three words, "Peter" and "King George." Memmie le Blanc was lured out of a tree in France in Champagne in 1731 when she was about ten; she seems to have been a Native American dropped for some reason by the slave trade. She could run and swim well, used a club to kill prey, and lived on roots and raw meat. She eventually learned some French, and made artificial flowers for her living. Victor, the Wild Boy of Aveyron was captured in the woods and lost twice over the years before being finally taken in 1800. His development is among the best documented, as a young doctor set out to make the wild boy social. Victor learned to say the French word for milk. Kamala was about eight years old, suckled by wolves in the Indian jungle, until she was captured in 1920. She lived nine further years, and learned a few words. The famous Kaspar Hauser had a strange tale of being kept prisoner in a cellar for sixteen years. He is the one feral child here that might be fraudulent. The most modern example, the sad Genie who was tied to a chair in Los Angeles until she was about thirteen, acquired lots of words but no grammar. What was going on in the minds of these children?

Probably no one knows with any confidence, but that does not stop curiosity or speculation. One of Genie's caretakers found her "unsocialized, primitive, hardly human." By the time we get to her case, we can see that the same thing was said of all these wild children, and that their suffering struck cords in those around them. But like Victor, Hauser, and Le Blanc, Genie was rescued, received intense caring attention, became a celebrity, and then was consigned to oblivion. The pattern happened over and over to the wild children who lived long enough, and seems to indicate that bringing such creatures happily into human society is almost impossible. Those who thought about these children, and they thought long and hard, were eager to examine humanity uncorrupted, as completely blank slates, but no one came close enough to understanding the children to make them social. We fantasize that we can reclaim such lost humans, or that they have the intellectual power to reclaim themselves; look at Mowgli or Tarzan. It must not be forgotten that these poor children survived under appalling conditions, and that can inspire some admiration. But humans need each other, and Newton's serious and earnest book is best at showing this simple truth in a new way.

Newton writes well. I found his book worthy of reading, but if you are expecting a deep study in the psychology of essential human nature absent the influence of culture you will be disappointed. The book focuses primarily on the impressions of those who have encountered feral human beings within a civilized setting. It is full of folk-psychological analyses of the phenomenon but nearly devoid of any in-depth scientific analysis. Perhaps what I was expecting is not available due to the ethical restrictions on studies of human beings. Nevertheless, the book seems more an exercise of philology than psychology or philosophy.

While the subject is as interesting as I could possibly imagine, the book itself really disappointed me. Lots of meandering and boring suppositions with occasional facts and interesting tidbits. I was looking for a book that tried to explain wild children, or at the very least would explain and examine how and why they are so different.

This read like someone who casually researched several cases and then wrote up an excellent magazine article.

Then they added 300 pages of filler off the top of their head, and the book was published.

This book is well researched and well written. As engrossing as it is disturbing, this is a must read for anyone interested in the history of lost or abandoned children. A study of personality developement as well as a case by case study of some of the most interesting and well documented cases of lost children. A must read for those interested in discovering what effect isolation or early contact with others really has.

I think I had too much anticipation for this book. Ever since viewing, late at night in a Dublin hotel, a History Channel documentary on feral children, I have been very curious about this subject. And while this is the first non-fiction book that I have read on the topic, I must admit that I was disappointed at how little new information was presented within its pages. The book more or less covered exactly what was in that documentary and a similar one presented on TLC, plus a rented one that I think originally aired on BBC. Added to that my Internet reading of the topic, and, well... I guess I just had much higher hopes for his decade of studying feral children. Not that his information was boring or poorly written, just the opposite in fact... it just wasn't new. Still, I am at least relieved to have finally read the book that I was so curious about. And it has lead to the addition of a few books to my list of books that I want to read, which is good - and hopefully there will be some new information there.

This is a fantastic book, bringing together six very different case studies of wild children. It is a book about innocence and its vulnerability. Exquisitely written, Newton brings together each tale with a great deal of feeling and consideration and is a book that will stay with you long after you have read it.

Despite the hip, appealing jacket and auspicious credentials of the author, this book disappoints. It feels like an academic toss-off, designed for the layperson with a fleeting interest, who will leaf through it like a magazine. To swim through the author's disjointed and often autobiographical slough to arrive at the occasional chunks of interesting stuff is simply not worthwhile. On page 9, the author describes his attitude toward his doctoral thesis (...I stayed up, slept late, frequented cafes in the long afternoons, wrote and unpublished novel and an unperformable play, watched far too many old movies, and diligently avoided my supervisor...) Replace 'supervisor' with 'lit agent', and we may have discovered Newton's approach to book writing as well.

It's a wonder that a writer could take such a fascinating subject matter and make it so annoying.

The book is not about the children as much as it is about how different cultures and eras have perceived individual "wild children" and speculations on the notion of boundaries between the wild and civilized. In fact, most of the stories of feral children are "alleged", since there seem to be no confirmed instances of wild children actually raised by animals. The nearest "authentic" examples are a few miserable cases of children confined alone in rooms from infancy and a brief mention of a Russian street child who roamed with a dog pack for 2 years. Interesting tidbits, as others have noted, linking Freud, Tarzan, Jack London, and the Cub Scouts, for instance.

Interesting, though not an in depth analyses ( as another reviewer stated).
Of course, one reason is some of these stories are just passed down tales----not a lot of info/documentation to begin with.
Was it just my copy?--Don't know, but there are no illustrations in the book even though there is a whole list of them in the Table of Contents.
The seller never returned my email regarding this so not sure if it was just mine or everyone's.

An interesting read that poses some crucial questions about language, trust, and human identity. What separates us from animals, and from each other as humans? Perhaps it's much less, and much more, than we think. These case histories describe children's abilities to survive in the wild as well as their various attempts at re-entering human society - attempts invariably fraught with sadness, triumph, mystery, or even all three.