Shasta of the Wolves is a feral child novel by British-born American children's author Olaf Baker. [1] The novel was originally published in 1919 by Dodd, Mead and Company with illustrations by Charles Livingston Bull, and was reprinted a number of times up until 1959. [2]
On a mountain in the Pacific Northwest, apparently in the 19th century, the she-wolf Nitka discovers an abandoned Native American baby and is inspired by the "Spirit of the Wild" to raise him alongside her own cubs. He has no name of his own to begin with, although the author calls him Shasta from the outset.
Like Rudyard Kipling's Mowgli (Baker even refers to him as a man-cub), Shasta grows up naked in the wild and is able to speak to animals, including the wise old black bear Gomposh, although this "speech" seems to consist as much of body language as of actual vocalization. Along the way his animal parents and friends rescue him from attacks by a grizzly bear and a moose, and he takes revenge on an eagle for killing wolf cubs.
Shasta also discovers a human tribe and is briefly captured by them before his wolf parents help him to escape. His curiosity eventually draws him back, and this time he is treated more kindly and persuaded to stay. The chief explains to the tribe that he is in fact one of their own tribesmen, Shasta, grandson of the old chief. Shasta's mother was killed by a tribesman who defected to an enemy tribe, the Assiniboines, taking Shasta and abandoning him in the hope that the wolves would kill him. Instead, he survived and eventually returned to the tribe bringing his "wolf medicine".
While Shasta is in the process of learning tribal ways, he discovers that the Assiniboines are once more planning to attack. During the raid Shasta is captured and prepared for sacrifice, but is once again rescued by his wolf-friends, who avenge his human mother's death by killing many of the enemy tribe.
After the battle Shasta stays with his wolf kindred, and the author is deliberately ambiguous as to whether he later returns to human society.
Victor of Aveyron was a French feral child who was found at the age of around 9. Not only is he considered the most famous feral child, but his case is also the most documented case of a feral child. Upon his discovery, he was captured multiple times, running away from civilization approximately eight times. Eventually his case was taken up by a young physician, Jean Marc Gaspard Itard, who worked with the boy for five years and gave him his name, Victor. Itard was interested in determining what Victor could learn. He devised procedures to teach the boy words and recorded his progress. Based on his work with Victor, Itard broke new ground in the education of the developmentally delayed.
Mowgli is a fictional character and the protagonist of Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book stories. He is a feral boy from the Pench area in Seoni, Madhya Pradesh, India, who originally appeared in Kipling's short story "In the Rukh" and then became the most prominent character in the collections The Jungle Book and The Second Jungle Book (1894–1895), which also featured stories about other characters.
The Jungle Book (1894) is a collection of stories by the English author Rudyard Kipling. Most of the characters are animals such as Shere Khan the tiger and Baloo the bear, though a principal character is the boy or "man-cub" Mowgli, who is raised in the jungle by wolves. The stories are set in a forest in India; one place mentioned repeatedly is "Seonee" (Seoni), in the central state of Madhya Pradesh.
The Second Jungle Book is a sequel to The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling. First published in 1895, it features five stories about Mowgli and three unrelated stories, all but one set in India, most of which Kipling wrote while living in Vermont. All of the stories were previously published in magazines in 1894–5, often under different titles. The 1994 film The Jungle Book used it as a source.
Shere Khan is a fictional Bengal tiger and the main antagonist of Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book and its adaptations. The name roughly translates as tiger ruler, with shere being the Persian word for 'tiger' and khan being used as a title of distinction among the Turco-Mongol peoples, usually meaning chief or ruler. According to The Kipling Society, the name "show[s] that he is the chief among tigers."
White Fang is a novel by American author Jack London (1876–1916) — and the name of the book's eponymous character, a wild wolfdog. First serialized in Outing magazine between May and October 1906, it was published in book form in October 1906. The story details White Fang's journey to domestication in Yukon Territory and the Northwest Territories during the 1890s Klondike Gold Rush. It is a companion novel to London's best-known work, The Call of the Wild (1903), which is about a kidnapped, domesticated dog embracing his wild ancestry to survive and thrive in the wild.
Guardians of Ga'Hoole is a fantasy book series written by Kathryn Lasky and published by Scholastic. The series contains a total of 16 books and although originally intended to conclude with the 2008 publication of The War of the Ember, a prequel The Rise of a Legend was published in 2013. Apart from the main series there are a few more books and spin-offs set in the same universe. The first three books of the series were adapted into the animated 3D film Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole, directed by Zack Snyder.
Amala and Kamala were two "feral girls" from Midnapore, Bengal(Currently West Bengal), India, who were alleged to have been raised by a wolf family.
"The law of the jungle" is an expression that has come to describe a scenario where "anything goes". The Oxford English Dictionary defines the Law of the Jungle as "the code of survival in jungle life, now usually with reference to the superiority of brute force or self-interest in the struggle for survival".
Chronicles of Ancient Darkness is a series of historical fantasy novels by the British author Michelle Paver; her first books for children. The books chronicle the adventures of Torak, an adolescent boy, and his friends Renn and Wolf. The main story arc revolves around Torak and his quest to defeat the Soul Eaters, a group of power hungry mages who seek out to destroy all life in the forest. Paver has called it simply "a single story: the tale of Torak's discovery of himself and his world."
Adventures of Mowgli is an animated feature-length story originally released as five animated shorts of about 20 minutes each between 1967 and 1971 in the Soviet Union. It is based on Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book. They were directed by Roman Davydov and made by Soyuzmultfilm studio. In 1973, the five films were combined into a single 96-minute feature film. The Russian DVD release of the restored footage, distributed by "Krupnyy Plan" and "Lizard", separates the animation into the original five parts.
The Cry of the Wolf is a novel for children or young adults, written by Melvin Burgess and published by Andersen Press in 1990 (ISBN 1849393753). Set on the island of Great Britain, it features a grey wolf raised partly by humans after learning only a little from its mother before her death, and the hunter who killed her and is obsessed with personally eliminating the species from the wild.
Superman: The Feral Man of Steel is a DC Comics Elseworlds special published in 1994, written by Darren Vincenzo, pencilled by Frank Fosco and inked by Stan Woch.
The Jungle Book: Mowgli's Story is a 1998 American adventure film directed by Nick Marck, produced by Mark H. Orvitz and written by José Rivera and Jim Herzfeld. It is the third film adaptation by The Walt Disney Company of the Mowgli stories from The Jungle Book (1894) by Rudyard Kipling. It stars Brandon Baker, and features the voice work of Brian Doyle-Murray, Eartha Kitt, Clancy Brown, Peri Gilpin, and Sherman Howard.
The Sight is a young adult fantasy novel written by British author David Clement-Davies. It is the first novel in The Sight series, with its sequel Fell taking place after. It follows a pack of wolves cursed by a lone wolf, Morgra, whose powers foretell the destiny of one of the mother wolf's pups: Larka, a white wolf gifted with a mysterious power known as The Sight. The story follows Larka's life as she is burdened with pain and terror that comes with the prophecy, as well as seeing the viewpoints of Larka's parents, Huttser and Palla, and her adoptive brother Kar.
A feral child is a young individual who has lived isolated from human contact from a very young age, with little or no experience of human care, social behavior, or language. The term is used to refer to children who have suffered severe abuse or trauma before being abandoned or running away. They are sometimes the subjects of folklore and legends, typically portrayed as having been raised by animals. While there are many cases of children being found in proximity to wild animals, there are no eye witness accounts of animals feeding children.
Kazan is a 1914 novel about a tame wolf-dog hybrid named Kazan. It was written by James Oliver Curwood and was followed in 1917, by a sequel, Baree, Son of Kazan.
Wolf: The Journey Home, originally titled Hungry for Home: A Wolf Odyssey, is a 1997 American young adult novel written by 'Asta Bowen. Originally published by Simon & Schuster with line drawings by Jane Hart Meyer, it was retitled and reprinted without illustrations in 2006 by Bloomsbury Publishing. Based on true accounts of the Pleasant Valley, Montana, wolf pack, the novel traces the life of a female alpha wolf named Marta after the forced relocation of her pack in 1989 to an unfamiliar territory. Terrified, Marta abandons her pack and begins a journey in search of her home; she eventually arrives in Ninemile Valley, where she finds a new mate with whom she starts a new pack.
Shasta of the Wolves public domain audiobook at LibriVox  | This article about a children's novel of the 1910s is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. See guidelines for writing about novels. Further suggestions might be found on the article's talk page. |
