I'm perplexed by all the negative reviews here. I couldn't put this book down. The author says right upfront that we know very little about these children, especially the ones from the 1800s and prior, so the only information we can glean about them is through the people that studied them. All we can see about these lost children comes through the researchers' eyes and there was enough there to keep my rapt attention. Well-written and fascinating. ( )

2.5 stars

The title of this book is misleading. The author doesn’t focus all that much on the “feral” children. He discusses philosophy (what distinguishes human from animal?), linguistics, Greek mythology, wild children in literature (Tarzan, Mowgli), the people who worked with, “saved”, experimented on, etc. the children after they were found.

It could have been a much better book if he’d simply focused on the children, themselves. It was pretty dry, at times. The last story was the most interesting for me: Genie was severely abused by her father (tied up for 13 years with no human contact), and I even happened to be interested in the language acquisition part of it after she got out. Unfortunately, most of the other stories lost my interest pretty quickly once the basics of the child’s story was told and the author moved on to academic issues stemming from that child. The last story and the kids’ stories, themselves are what “pushed” this up the extra ½ star. ( )

This book is ostensibly about feral children throughout the ages. In reality, Newton is so enthralled with the philosophical and psychological possibilities of the *idea* of humans raised outside of society that he only talks about four children. Even when he is supposedly telling these disenfranchised children's tales, he spends most of his pages on disecting the writers who wrote about them. Seriously, there are entire chapters about Swift and Defoe's family and life--and only a few pages on a "wild boy". Very frustrating! ( )