Encounters With Wild Children

Through detailed readings of a wide variety of accounts, debates, and representations, Encounters with Wild Children explores the many different meanings these children were given and the varied responses they elicited. Adriana Benzaqu n explains why wild children continue to haunt and fascinate Western scientists and shows how the knowledge they have generated in different disciplines, including anthropology, psychology, psychiatry, pedagogy, linguistics, and sociology, has contributed to the shaping and reshaping of the modern understanding of "the child" and affected the social and institutional practices directed at all children in schools, welfare, mental health, and the law.

From big cats to elephants and indigenous communities, Wild Encounters is a must-have for nature lovers, conservationists, and anyone who is inspired by all that remains wild. David Yarrow travels from pole to pole and continent to continent to visit frozen Arctic tundras, vast African deserts, primordial rain forests, and remote villages, inviting us to truly connect with subjects we mistakenly think we have seen before. Yarrow takes the familiar—lions, elephants, tigers, polar bears—and makes it new again by creating iconic images that deliberately connect with us at a highly emotional level. For more than two decades, this legendary wildlife photographer has been putting himself in harm's way to capture the most unbelievable close-up animal photography, amassing an incomparable photographic portfolio, spanning six continents. Driven by a passion for sharing and preserving Earth's last great wild cultures and species, Yarrow is as much a conservationist as a photographer and artist. His work has transcended wildlife photography and is now collected and shown as fine art in some of the most famed galleries around the world. Featuring 160 of his most breathtaking photographs, Wild Encounters offers a truly intimate view of some of the world's most compelling—and threatened—species and captures the splendor and very soul of what remains wild and free in our world through portraits that feel close enough to touch.

Exploring how the figure of the “wild child” in contemporary fiction grapples with contemporary cultural anxieties about reproductive ethics and the future of humanity In the eighteenth century, Western philosophy positioned the figure of “the child” at the border between untamed nature and rational adulthood. Contemporary cultural anxieties about the ethics and politics of reproductive choice and the crisis of parental responsibility have freighted this liminal figure with new meaning in twenty-first-century narratives. In Wild Child, Naomi Morgenstern explores depictions of children and their adult caregivers in extreme situations—ranging from the violence of slavery and sexual captivity to accidental death, mass murder, torture, and global apocalypse—in such works as Toni Morrison’s A Mercy, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk about Kevin, Emma Donoghue’s Room, and Denis Villeneuve’s film Prisoners. Morgenstern shows how, in such narratives, “wild” children function as symptoms of new ethical crises and existential fears raised by transformations in the technology and politics of reproduction and by increased ethical questions about the very decision to reproduce. In the face of an uncertain future that no longer confirms the confidence of patriarchal humanism, such narratives displace or project present-day apprehensions about maternal sacrifice and paternal protection onto the wildness of children in a series of hyperbolically violent scenes. Urgent and engaging, Wild Child offers the only extended consideration of how twenty-first-century fiction has begun to imagine the decision to reproduce and the ethical challenges of posthumanist parenting.

"Novelist and essayist Brian Doyle describes encounters with astounding beings of every sort and shape in this collection of short vignettes. The book gathers previously unpublished work along with selections that have been published in Orion, The Sun, and The American Scholar, among others"--

#1 Bookscan in Juvenile Non-fiction! ─ Be Brave… Stay Wild! Animal Stories for Kids: Coyote Peterson's Brave Adventures: Wild Animals in a Wild World chronicles some of the wildest encounters Coyote Peterson has had over the course of his travels. The stories begin with his first snapping turtle catch as a kid and lead down a trail of incredible moments he and his camera crew have had while filming their Brave Wilderness shows. From a giant alligator that nearly caught Coyote in its bone crushing jaws, to an 800 pound Grizzly Bear that helped him teach the audience what to do and NOT do if you ever encounter one of these enormous predators in the wild, every tale is laced with fast paced action and daring adventure. With the presence of danger often looming for Coyote, each story reminds the reader that animals rule the wild places of this planet, and if we respect them from a safe distance, even the most frightening creatures are more likely to be afraid of us than we should ever be of them. Exciting animal stories for kids of all ages: This collection of short stories aims to give the reader a first-person perspective into some of Coyote’s most harrowing and heartwarming adventures.

Vicky Lebeau investigates how films use children to probe such themes as sexuality, death, imagination, the terrors of childhood, and hope.

Electronic version of 2000 text.