Wild Child

Wild child, feral child, noble savage

Stories about abandoned, isolated children who grew up alone in the wild, without parents, without the influences of civilized society, have been chronicled since the earliest days of recorded history.
These children have survived because of their ability to adapt to the natural environment, primarily forests, with dogs, apes, wolves, birds, and other creatures as their companions.
Whether myth, legend, fictional story, or historical fact, these children have fascinated philosophers, doctors, educators, psychologists, and others because they focus attention on the question of what it means to be human.

Wild child, feral child, noble savage

What separates man from animals?
What are the innately human characteristics that children are "born with," and what are the human characteristics developed through education and socialization, attributes "learned" only through contact with other human beings.
Is civilization a positive influence on developing human beings or an impediment that negates, frustrates, disallows natural, "better," characteristics?
The answer varies, depending upon the philosophical thinking of the times.
The answer is a little clearer in the modern day with educators and psychologists focusing on the developmental progress of children, such as the acquisition of language.

Wild child, feral child, noble savage

Critical distinction!
There are in fact historical accounts of "wild" children but the earliest ones are sparse and dubious.
There are in fact more recent historical accounts of abandoned or abused children who have lived in the wild, but only a few examples have been rigorously studied.
More often the "wild child" is a fictional construct that represents the author's interpretation of "basic human nature."
So, it's a literary trope that embodies the arguments of philosophers about human nature from the beginnings of civilization to the present.
But children's literature is full of imaginative stories about "impossible" children, the world they live in, and their animal companions. Why?

Feral children (Britannica)

Feral children, also called wild children, are children who through either accident or deliberate isolation have grown up with limited human contact. Such children have often been seen as inhabiting a boundary zone between human and animal existence; for this reason the motif of the child reared by animals is a recurring theme in myth.
In the modern era, feral children have been seen as providing a window for the scientific study of fundamental human traits such as language use. During the 20th century, as psychologists endeavored to distinguish between behaviorism and biological nature, wild children—a designation including children in isolation as well as those who survived among animals—again seemed to provide a key to the puzzle

Feral children (Britannica)

Before the 17th century, outside of myth and legend, only scattered and fragmented stories of feral or wild children appear in European history. Suddenly, during the 1600s, several accounts emerge; there are descriptions of a wolf boy in Germany and children abducted by bears in Poland; and, in 1644, the first story appears in English of John of Liège, a boy lost by his parents in the woods who took on animal-like behaviors to survive on his own for years.
Early descriptions of such children detailed their non-human qualities: running on all fours, foraging and hunting for food, exceptional hearing, and absence of language.
As several such children were rescued from the wild and brought back into human society, their continued animalistic behavior coupled with a seeming inability to master language fascinated philosophers, who began to wonder if such children actually belonged to a different species from the human family.

Feral children (Britannica)

This question was taken up with great seriousness in the 18th and 19th centuries as science attempted to name, classify, and understand the intricacies of the natural world and human development.
The most widely known feral child of the early 18th century was a boy found near Hanover in 1725. Peter the Wild Boy—as the famous physician John Arbuthnot named him—became a fascination of English royalty, living for the next few years with both King George I and the Prince of Wales.
Like earlier children found in the wilderness, Peter’s unbreakable silence and unique ability to survive much as an animal would compelled scientists to address this animal-human divide. Within a decade of Peter’s discovery, Carolus Linnaeus, the hugely influential natural historian, actually included feral man, homo ferens, as one of six distinct human species. Notably, h. ferens is the only classification listing individuals—rather than whole races—as examples.

Feral children (Britannica)

In the 1792 translation of Linnaeus’s Natural Systems into English, however, a note was added that such children were probably “idiots” who had been abandoned or had strayed from their families.
It was this conflation of feral nature and disability that was taken up by Jean-Marc-Gaspard Itard in his project of civilizing one of the most famous cases in Europe, Victor of Aveyron, a wild boy caught in 1800 in the forests near Lacaune. Philippe Pinel, the foremost physician in France, dismissed Victor as an “idiot,” but to Itard, the boy was a living artifact—an atavistic body on which to test the notion espoused by John Locke and later by Étienne Bonnot de Condillac that human knowledge was constructed rather than inborn.
After several years of training, however, Victor was still unable to use language, a failure that further solidified an understanding of feral children as mentally “infantile” and “inferior.”

Feral children (Britannica)

Presently, most psychologists attribute the inability of such children to master language to their unique histories of survival outside of human society—as a behavioral mechanism specifically adapted to their environment and circumstances rather than a biological inability.
Fascination with wild children, however, remains, and the fates of such children become deeply tied to the doctors, teachers, and caregivers who, through measurement, diagnosis, training, and compassion, inevitably attempt to socialize these children and return them to the fold of human interaction.

From The Magic Hour

When Julia does an internet search, she finds the following:
- Feral children are lost, abandoned, or otherwise forgotten children who survive in completely isolated conditions. The idea of children raised by wolves or bears is prevalent in legend, although there are few scientifically documented cases. Some of the more celebrated such children include:
- The three Hungarian bear boys (17th century)
- The girl of Oranienburg (1717)
- Peter, the wild boy (1726)
- Victor of Aveyron (1797)
- Kaspar Hauser (1828)
- Kamala and Amala of India (1920)
- Genie (1970)

From The Magic Hour

She also finds:
- The second most recent case listed had been in the 1990s. It featured a Ukrainian child named Oxana Malaya, who was said to have been raised by dogs until the age of eight. She never mastered normal social skills. Today, at the age of twenty-three, she lived in a home for the mentally disabled.
- In 2004, a seven-year-old boy—also reportedly raised by wild dogs—was found in the deep woods of Siberia. To date he had not learned to speak.

Victor of Aveyron

A French feral child found at age 9, he is considered the most famous and most documented case. 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.

Victor of Aveyron

Victor was prepubescent when found in 1800, but experienced puberty within a year or two. It is not known when or how he came to live in the woods near Saint-Sernin-sur-Rance, though he was reportedly seen there around 1794.
In 1797 he was spotted by three hunters; he ran from them but they were able to catch him when he tried to climb a tree. They brought him to a nearby town where he was cared for by a widow. However, he soon escaped and returned to the woods; he was periodically spotted in 1798 and 1799.
On 8 January 1800, he emerged from the forests on his own. His age was unknown, but citizens of the village estimated his age to be about 12. His lack of speech, as well as his food preferences and the numerous scars on his body, suggested that he had been in the wild for most of his life.

Victor of Aveyron

When found in 1800, he was naked, stooped and with tousled hair, did not speak and his movements were chaotic. According to the philosopher François Dagognet, "he walks on four legs, eats plants, is hairy, deaf and mute." The psychiatrist Philippe Pinel, doctor at the Bicêtre Hospital, wrote a report on Victor and considered him mentally ill and an idiot from birth.
Although he had been exposed to society and education, he made little progress. Many questioned his ability to learn because of his initial state. One academic researcher wrote that "it is one thing to say that the [person] of nature is not yet fully human; it is quite another thing to say that the [person] of nature cannot become fully human."
After Sicard became frustrated with the boy's lack of progress, Victor was left to roam the institution by himself, until Itard decided to take the boy into his home to keep reports and monitor his development.

Victor of Aveyron—the Enlightenment

During the Enlightenment, many thinkers, including naturalists and philosophers, believed that human nature was a subject to be redefined and examined from a different perspective.
Because of the French Revolution and new developments in science and philosophy, humans were not considered "special" but as characteristic of their place in nature. It was hoped that by studying the wild boy, this idea would gain support. As such, Victor became a case study in the Enlightenment debate about the differences between humans and other animals.
At that time, the scientific category juvenis averionensis was used, as a special case of the homo ferus, described by Linnaeus whose discoveries then forced people to ask the question, "What makes us [human]?"

Victor of Aveyron—the Enlightenment

The noble savage was another idea developed during the Enlightenment. It postulated that a person existing in the pure state of nature would be "gentle, innocent, a lover of solitude, ignorant of evil and incapable of causing intentional harm."
Philosophies proposed by Rousseau, Locke and Descartes were evolving around the time the boy was discovered in France in 1800. These philosophies invariably influenced the way the boy was perceived by others, and eventually, how Itard would structure his education.

Oxana Malaya

Oxana Malaya was an eight-year-old Ukrainian girl who lived with Black Russian Terriers for six years. She was found in a kennel with dogs in 1991.
She was neglected by her parents, who were alcoholics. The three-year-old, looking for comfort, crawled into the farm and snuggled in with the dogs. Her behavior imitated dogs more than humans. She walked on all fours, bared her teeth, and barked.
She was removed from her parents' custody by the social services. As she lacked human contact, she did not know any words besides "yes" and "no."
Upon adulthood, Oxana has been taught to subdue her dog-like behavior. She learned to speak fluently and intelligently and works at the farm milking cows, but remains somewhat intellectually impaired.
Years later, Oxana admitted on a Russian talk show that her story was slightly less dramatic; neglected by her parents, she sought out the company of the dogs and learned to imitate them as they were more responsive than her parents.

Genie

Genie (born 1957) is the pseudonym of an American feral child who was a victim of severe abuse, neglect, and social isolation. Her circumstances are prominently recorded in the annals of linguistics and abnormal child psychology.
When she was approximately 20 months old, her father began keeping her in a locked room. During this period, he almost always strapped her into a child's toilet or bound her in a crib with her arms and legs immobilized, forbade anyone from interacting with her, provided her with almost no stimulation of any kind, and left her severely malnourished. The extent of her isolation prevented her from being exposed to any significant amount of speech, and as a result she did not acquire language during her childhood.
Her abuse came to the attention of Los Angeles County child welfare authorities in November 1970, when she was 13 years and 7 months old, after which she became a ward of the state of California.

Genie

Psychologists, linguists, and other scientists almost immediately focused a great deal of attention on Genie's case. Upon determining that Genie had not yet learned language, linguists saw Genie as providing an opportunity to gain further insight into the processes controlling language acquisition skills and to test theories and hypotheses identifying critical periods during which humans learn to understand and use language.
Throughout the time scientists studied Genie, she made substantial advances in her overall mental and psychological development. Within months, she developed exceptional nonverbal communication skills and gradually learned some basic social skills, but even by the end of their case study, she still exhibited many behavioral traits characteristic of an unsocialized person. She also continued to learn and use new language skills throughout the time they tested her, but ultimately remained unable to fully acquire a first language.

Genie

Authorities initially arranged for Genie's admission to the Children's Hospital Los Angeles, where a team of physicians and psychologists managed her care for several months. Her subsequent living arrangements became the subject of rancorous debate. In June 1971, she left the hospital to live with her teacher from the hospital, but a month and a half later, authorities placed her with the family of the scientist heading the research team, with whom she lived for almost four years.
Soon after turning 18, Genie returned to live with her mother, who decided after a few months that she could not adequately care for her. Authorities then moved her into the first of what would become a series of institutions for disabled adults, and the people running it cut her off from almost everyone she knew and subjected her to extreme physical and emotional abuse.

Genie

As a result, her physical and mental health severely deteriorated, and her newly acquired language and behavioral skills rapidly regressed.
In early January 1978, Genie's mother abruptly forbade all scientific observations and testing of Genie. Little is known about her circumstances since then. Her current whereabouts are uncertain, although she is believed to be living in the care of the state of California.
Psychologists and linguists continue to discuss her, and there is considerable academic and media interest in her development and the research team's methods. In particular, scientists have compared Genie to Victor of Aveyron, a 19th-century French child who was also the subject of a case study in delayed psychological development and late language acquisition.

Question for discussion

The acquisition of language is especially significant as a human characteristic, which we see in Kristin Hannah's novel. Do you see a corollary in Hamnet with the importance of names?
Other Questions? Comments?

Literary examples, myths, of the "wild child"

Romulus and Remus
Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan
J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan
Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are
Charles Dickens
William Golding, Lord of the Flies
Treasure Island (N. C. Wyeth illustrations)
Huck Finn (Mark Twain)
Mowgli—Kipling's The Jungle Books, which he read to his children at night

Romulus and Remus (Britannica)

Romulus and Remus, the legendary founders of Rome. Traditionally, they were the sons of Rhea Silvia, daughter of Numitor, king of Alba Longa.
Numitor had been deposed by his younger brother Amulius, who forced Rhea to become one of the Vestal Virgins (and thereby vow chastity) to prevent her from giving birth to potential claimants to the throne.
Nevertheless, Rhea bore the twins Romulus and Remus, fathered by the war god Mars. Amulius ordered the infants drowned in the Tiber River, but the trough in which they were placed floated down the river and came to rest at the site of the future Rome, near the ficus ruminalis, a sacred fig tree of historical times. There a she-wolf and a woodpecker—both sacred to Mars—suckled and fed them until they were found by the herdsman Faustulus.

Romulus and Remus (Britannica)

Reared by Faustulus and his wife, the twins became leaders of a band of adventurous youths, eventually killing Amulius and restoring their grandfather to the throne. They subsequently founded a town on the site where they had been saved. When Romulus built a city wall, Remus jumped over it and was killed by his brother.
The legend of Romulus and Remus probably originated in the 4th century BCE and was set down in coherent form at the end of the 3rd century BCE. It contains a mixture of Greek and Roman elements.
The Greeks customarily created mythical heroes to explain the origins of place names. By including Mars in the legend, the Romans were attempting to connect their origins with that important deity.
In the early 21st century, archaeologists discovered remains from the 8th century BCE of a cave, possible boundary walls, and a palace that demonstrate parallels between history and legend.

Kipling, The Jungle Book

A major theme in the book is abandonment followed by fostering; this is Mowgli's life, which echoes Kipling's own childhood. The theme is echoed in the triumph of protagonists including Rikki-Tikki-Tavi and The White Seal.
The stories are not about animal behavior, still less about the Darwinian struggle for survival, but about human archetypes in animal form.
They teach respect for authority, obedience, and knowing one's place in society with "the law of the jungle," but the stories also illustrate the freedom to move between different worlds, such as when Mowgli moves between the jungle and the village.
Critics have also noted essential wildness and lawless energies in the stories, reflecting the irresponsible side of human nature.
The book has been influential in the scout movement, whose founder, Robert Baden-Powell, was a friend of Kipling's.

Kipling, The Jungle Book

The stories were first published in magazines in 1893–94.
Kipling was born in India and spent the first six years of his childhood there. After about ten years in England, he went back to India and worked there for about six and a half years.
These stories were written when Kipling lived in Vermont and there is evidence that he wrote the stories for his daughter Josephine, who died from pneumonia in 1899, age 6.
A first edition of the book with a handwritten note by the author to his young daughter was discovered at the National Trust's Wimpole Hall in Cambridgeshire, England, in 2010.

Kipling, The Jungle Book

The tales in the book are fables, as are those in The Second Jungle Book, which followed in 1895, including eight further stories, with five about Mowgli. They use animals in an anthropomorphic manner to teach moral lessons.
The verses of "The Law of the Jungle," for example, lay down rules for the safety of individuals, families, and communities. Kipling put in them nearly everything he knew or "heard or dreamed about the Indian jungle."
Other readers have interpreted the work as allegories of the politics and society of the time.
One reviewer argued that the purpose of the stories was not to teach about animals but to create human archetypes through the animal characters, with lessons of respect for authority.

Kipling, The Jungle Book

Another wrote that Kipling was obsessed by rules, a theme running throughout the stories and named explicitly as "the law of the jungle." The rules required obedience and "knowing your place," but also provided social relationships and "freedom to move between different worlds."
Yet another reviewer stated that the law may be highly codified, but that the energies are also lawless, embodying the part of human nature which is "floating, irresponsible and self-absorbed." She finds a duality between the two worlds of the village and the jungle, but Mowgli can travel between the two.
The novelist and critic Angus Wilson noted that Kipling's law of the jungle was "far from Darwinian," and found the popularity of the Mowgli stories is not literary but moral: the animals can follow the law easily, but Mowgli has human joys and sorrows, and the burden of making decisions.

J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan (Britannica)

Although the title character first appeared in J. M. Barrie’s novel The Little White Bird (1902), he is best known as the protagonist of Peter Pan or The Boy Who Would Not Grow Up, a play first produced in 1904. Originally composed of three acts, the play was often revised, with the definitive version in five acts published in 1928. The work added a new character to the mythology of the English-speaking world in the figure of Peter Pan, the eternal boy.
The play begins in the nursery of the Darling household in London, where Wendy, John, and Michael are going to bed when they are surprised by the arrival of Peter Pan and the fairy Tinker Bell. Peter has come to retrieve his shadow, which he had previously lost there. Peter reveals that he lives in Never Land as captain of the Lost Boys, children who fell out of their baby carriages when their nurses were looking the other way.

J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan (Britannica)

Invited by Peter to come to Never Land to tell stories to the Lost Boys, Wendy and her brothers fly with Peter to an island populated by villainous pirates led by Peter’s sworn enemy, Captain Hook; a crocodile that had been fed Hook’s arm by Peter Pan and wishes to eat the rest of him (but has also swallowed a clock, the ticking of which can be heard when the beast is near); and Tiger Lily, leader of a band of “redskin braves” who is also in competition with Wendy and the jealous Tinker Bell for Peter’s affection. Peter, however, shows little reciprocal interest.
Magical adventures and pirate attacks take place. At length the Darling children decide to return home, taking the Lost Boys with them, but they are captured by the pirates. The boys are made to walk the plank and Wendy is tied to the mast, but Peter Pan rescues them, and the boys kill all the pirates. At last the children return to London, leaving Peter Pan to his perpetual boyhood.

J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan (Britannica)

The name derives from two sources:
- Peter Llewelyn Davies, one of the five Llewelyn Davies boys who inspired the story, and Pan, a minor deity of Greek mythology who plays pipes to nymphs and is part human and part goat.
- The god Pan represents nature or man's natural state in contrast to civilization and the effects of upbringing on human behavior; he also garnered significant interest among English artists, poets and novelists during the Edwardian period.

J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan (Britannica)

Peter Pan is a free spirit, too young to be burdened with education or to have an adult appreciation of moral responsibility. As a "betwixt-and-between," who can fly and speak the language of fairies and birds, Peter is part animal and part human.
According to psychologist Rosalind Ridley, Barrie raises many post-Darwinian questions about the origins of human nature and behavior.
As "the boy who wouldn't grow up," Peter exhibits many stages of cognitive development seen in children and can be regarded as Barrie's memory of himself as a child, being both charmingly childlike and childishly solipsistic.

Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan

Tarzan (John Clayton II, Viscount Greystoke) the fictional character is an archetypal feral child raised in the African jungle by the Mangani great apes; he later experiences civilization, only to reject it and return to the wild as an heroic adventurer.
Created by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan first appeared in the novel Tarzan of the Apes (magazine publication 1912, book publication 1914), and subsequently in 23 sequels, several books by Burroughs and other authors, and other media, both authorized and unauthorized.
Tarzan is the son of a British lord and lady marooned on the coast of Angola by mutineers. When Tarzan was an infant, his mother died, and his father was killed by the ape tribe who adopted Tarzan.
Soon after his parents' death, Tarzan became a feral child, brought up by the Mangani apes, a species unknown to science.

Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan

As originally depicted, Tarzan is intelligent and articulate, and does not speak broken English as the classic movies of the 1930s depict him.
He is literate in English before he first encounters other English-speaking people. His literacy is self-taught after several years in his early teens by visiting the log cabin of his infancy and looking at children's primer/picture books. He eventually reads every book in his father's portable book collection, and is fully aware of geography, basic world history, and his family tree.
He can communicate with many species of jungle animals, and when "found" by traveling Frenchman Paul d'Arnot, tells him: "I speak only the language of my tribe—the great apes and a little of the languages of the elephant, the lion, and of the other folks of the jungle I understand."

Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan

One reviewer described the response of various people at the time as either challenging or agreeing with the idea that "civilization" is predicated on white masculinity. Other reviewers have found Tarzan both racist and sexist charging that he actually enjoys killing black people. She reminds readers that when Tarzan first introduces himself to Jane, he does so as "Tarzan, the killer of beasts and many black men."
Burroughs, in all probability, was not trying to make any kind of statement. In telling racist and sexist stories whose protagonist boasted of killing black people, he was instead just being a typical 1912 White American.
Kipling's Mowgli has been cited as a major influence on Burroughs' creation of Tarzan. Mowgli was also an influence for a number of other "wild boy" characters. Jerry Siegel named Tarzan and another Burroughs character, John Carter, as early inspiration for his creation of Superman.

Lord of the Flies

Lord of the Flies is a 1954 novel by the Nobel Prize-winning British author William Golding. The plot centers on a group of British boys stranded on an uninhabited island and their disastrous attempts to govern themselves.
At an allegorical level, the central theme is the conflicting human impulses toward civilization and social organization – living by rules, peacefully and in harmony – and toward the will to power. Themes include the tension between groupthink and individuality, between rational and emotional reactions, and between morality and immorality. How these play out and how different people feel their influence form a major subtext of Lord of the Flies. The name "Lord of the Flies" is a literal translation of Beelzebub, from 2 Kings 1:2–3, 6, 16.

Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are

Maurice Bernard Sendak was an American illustrator and writer of children's books. He became most widely known for his book Where the Wild Things Are, first published in 1963.

Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are

Born to Polish-Jewish parents, his childhood was affected by the death of many of his family members during the Holocaust. Sendak also wrote works such as In the Night Kitchen, Outside Over There, and illustrated many works by other authors including the Little Bear books by Else Holmelund Minarik.
Sendak gained international acclaim after writing and illustrating Where the Wild Things Are, edited by Ursula Nordstrom at Harper & Row. It features Max, a boy who "rages against his mother for being sent to bed without any supper." The book's depictions of fanged monsters concerned some parents when it was first published, as his characters were somewhat grotesque in appearance.

Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are

Sendak later recounted the reaction of a fan:
A little boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing on it. I loved it. I answer all my children's letters – sometimes very hastily – but this one I lingered over. I sent him a card and I drew a picture of a Wild Thing on it. I wrote, 'Dear Jim: I loved your card.' Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said: 'Jim loved your card so much he ate it.' That to me was one of the highest compliments I've ever received. He didn't care that it was an original Maurice Sendak drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it.

Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are

Almost 50 years later, School Library Journal sponsored a survey of readers which identified Where the Wild Things Are as a top picture book. The librarian who conducted it observed that there was little doubt what would be voted number one and highlighted its designation by one reader as a watershed, "ushering in the modern age of picture books."
Another called it "perfectly crafted, perfectly illustrated . . . simply the epitome of a picture book" and noted that Sendak "rises above the rest in part because he is subversive."
When Sendak saw a manuscript for the first children's book by Isaac Bashevis Singer on an editor's desk at Harper & Row, he offered to illustrate the book. Published in 1966 it received a Newbery Honor. Sendak was delighted about the collaboration. He once wryly remarked that his parents were "finally" impressed by their youngest child when he collaborated with Singer.

Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are

His book In the Night Kitchen, originally issued in 1970, has often been subjected to censorship for its drawings of a young boy prancing naked through the story. The book has been challenged in several U.S. states and regularly appears on the American Library Association's list of "frequently challenged and banned books."
His 1981 book Outside Over There is the story of a girl named Ida and her sibling jealousy and responsibility. Her father is away, so Ida is left to watch her baby sister, much to her dismay. Her sister is kidnapped by goblins and Ida must go off on a magical adventure to rescue her.
At first, she is not really eager to get her sister and nearly passes her sister right by when she becomes absorbed in the magic of the quest. In the end, she rescues her baby sister, destroys the goblins, and returns home committed to caring for her sister until her father returns home.

Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are

Sendak was an early member of the National Board of Advisors to the Children's Television Workshop during development of the Sesame Street television series. He also adapted his book Bumble Ardy into an animated sequence for the series, with Jim Henson as the voice of Bumble Ardy.
From the PBS American Masters series:
Maurice Sendak has spent the past fifty years bringing to life a world of fantasy and imagination. His unique vision is loved around the globe by both young and old.
Throughout the past fifty years, Maurice Sendak has been one of the most consistently inventive and challenging voices in children’s literature. His books and productions are among the best-loved imaginative works of their time. Like the Grimm brothers before him, Sendak has created a body of work both entertaining and educational, which will continue to be popular for generations.

Breakout room question

Although there are a handful of historic cases about a "wild child," their imaginative existence is more prevalent in children's literature.
Using your knowledge and experience of children's literature, how do you explain the fascination with animals and the natural world, with atypical childhood characters, with imaginative adventures, and other content in popular children's books?