The Wild Children

by Felice Holman

Book Overview

Left behind when his family is arrested by soldiers during the dark days following the Bolshevik Revolution, twelve-year-old Alex falls in with a gang of other desperate homeless children, but never... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0140319301
• ISBN13: 9780140319309
• Release Date: August 1985
• Publisher: Puffin Books
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.1" x 7.8"
• Age Range: 4 to 8 years
• Grade Range: Grades 5 to 3

Customer Reviews

Haunting tales of the bezprizorny

This is a really haunting, moving, unforgettable book about a tragic period in history, on a subject not well-known in the West. Many people don't know the full consequences of what happened in the wake of the Russian Revolution and Civil War; among other sad and tragic things, many children were left orphaned and homeless, and banded together for protection, roaming the length, width, and breadth of the Soviet Union. Other reviewers have complained it's too dark, sad, or mean-spirited, but that's how life was for these people in that place and at that time. Many young people were left without any family (occasionally in these bands of wild children you might find siblings, cousins, or children who had been friends before the Revolution), homeless, forced to hide in abandoned houses, barns, cellars, caves, stables, left without warm clothing, made into thieves and cannibals not because they were heartless and vindictive but because there was no other way for them to survive. One day young Alex wakes up and finds his house in shambles, his parents and younger sister Nadya missing. He was spared because the Bolsheviks didn't know that his room was behind the wall. Alex goes first to his favourite teacher Katriana, but for safety reasons he can't stay with her for long, and goes to find his uncle Dmitriy, who he discovers has also been taken away. He has nowhere else to go, is alone, cold, homeless, and afraid, when he is befriended by a sweet little boy named Misha, who brings him to the cellar where a bunch of other homeless boys are staying. The leader, Peter, is wary of him at first, but before long Alex has been accepted as one of their own, though the two oldest, Boris and Grigoriy, don't completely warm up to him. To escape the remainder of the cold Russian winter, the boys go on a trip to the Caucauses by sneaking onto a train. Before they left, they also took in a new bandmember, Anya, their only girl. Unfortunately, perhaps because Boris and Grigoriy informed on them to the police, they are caught by the authorities in the Caucauses and shipped off to an orphanage; Peter tells Alex they have been in them before but escaped. Escape becomes even more of a priority this time around after the mean director does something very horrible to them and Peter takes revenge for it. Unlike many real-life gangs of bezprizorny (literally "homeless ones"), these children have an optimistic and happy end to their story; we don't know what will happen to them in the future, but we know they'll be alright. Too many of these children ended up dead, in prison, permanently in orphanages, in camps, or in horrible living situations as adults.

It Rocks

This Book is amazing!!!!! It shows the live of these waifs back during the Russian Rev. It is a heart touching story tjat you would want to read over and over. Get your hands on it fast, there's not that many left in the world!!!!!!!!!!

This book is excellent!

"The Wild Children", was one of the best books i have ever read! Im not a real big reader but this book i couldn't keep my hands off of. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to read it. I like how the kids in the book brought Alex in and welcomed him in there band. The Wild Children probably has everything you need in a book. Like drama action comedy etc. Everyone READ THIS BOOK! ITS EXCELLENT!

was intresting

Overall the book was pretty good it had some non interesting parts but it was still pretty good.Some parts of the book helped me realize how lucky i was to have nice things. The book also changed how i look at things im really not so picky anymore.And it also helped me to not look down on less fortunate but instead accept them and love them just like any other wealthy person.

Excellent

I read this work when I was about 10 or 11 years old as published in Reader's Digest, so it was not a class assignment. It took me two days to read it only because I was forced to put it down to go to bed. I read it four times while on summer vaccation that year and have never forgotten it.I also checked the actual book out from the library later and re-read it again. I can not say enough about the effect it has had on me. It remains a favorite to this day, sixteen years later.