Wild Boy (1998) by Mordicai Gerstein

Authors

Gareth B. Matthews, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Files

Description

Once there was a boy who lived alone, without a mother or father or any friends, in a forest in Southern France. He was naked. He didn’t even know what clothes were. He didn’t know he was a boy. He didn’t know what people were. He was wild. When a group of hunters discovered the boy, they delivered him to scientists in Paris, who eventually gave up trying to communicate with him. The boy was taken in by Dr. Itard and his housekeeper, Madame Guerin, who taught him to dress himself, to read and write simple words, and help around the house—though he never learned to speak. Mordicai Gerstein’s sensitively written and beautifully illustrated picture book about of the wild child of Aveyron, who was captured in Southern France two hundred years ago, invites us to ask ourselves who we are, what makes us human beings, and how we differ from nonhuman animals.

Publication Date

1999

Publisher

Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children

City

Montclair

Keywords

animals, childhood, education, humans, philosophy for children, wild child of Aveyron

Disciplines

Early Childhood Education | Education | Philosophy

Recommended Citation

Matthews, Gareth B., "Wild Boy (1998) by Mordicai Gerstein" (1999). Picture Books. 39.
https://digitalcommons.montclair.edu/iapc_thinkingstories_picturebooks/39