From Publishers Weekly
As a child, literature professor Michael Newton (University College, London) was captivated by Tarzan movies and Kipling's The Jungle Book. It's only fitting, then, that his first book, Savage Girls and Wild Boys: A History of Feral Children, would investigate the history of children raised by (among others) wolves, monkeys and wild dogs. If these children help us understand "our continuing relationship with the savage image of ourselves" they also serve as a useful mirror of society's ills. As Newton argues, the medical treatments, therapeutic interventions, and general media hoopla following the discoveries of these children sharply reveal the intellectual and political fixations of their particular historical milieu from Victor, the "Wild Child of Aveyron," in 1800, onward. As interesting as such stories are in themselves, however, Newton's real strength lies in his ability to recognize how these children, seemingly helpless yet astonishingly self-contained, inevitably awaken our rescue fantasies and parental longings. Newton is a consummate storyteller, and this richly detailed study will work just as well outside of academe as within it.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
We are fascinated and appalled by stories of abandoned and lost children who are raised by animals in the wilderness or who fend for themselves like animals in the wilds of our cities or, worse, children who are subjected to prolonged and brutal solitary confinement. Such children have no human language or sense of connection to other human beings and are, therefore, terribly alone. Newton finds that the troubling lives of these feral outsiders challenge our most closely held notions about human nature and society. As he recounts the astonishing histories of such feral children as Peter the Wild Boy, who so intrigued Jonathan Swift; the savage girl of Champagne, reclaimed in 1731 and named Memmie Le Blanc; the famous Kaspar Hauser; and Genie, a savagely abused captive liberated in L.A. in 1970, Newton also insightfully portrays those who studied and worked with them, carefully deciphering their beliefs and motives. Ultimately, Newton concludes his unique and deeply compassionate study with a discerning meditation on the crucial questions "wild" children raise about nature, nurture, and civilization.
Donna SeamanCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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