Showing results for "Wild Child" in Anthologies & Short Stories

It is at the end of the eighteenth century, in the new French Republic, when the savage is first seen outside the village of Lacaune. The boy quickly becomes a legend among the townsfolk. Is he truly a human child or a wild beast? "Wild Child" is based on the story of Victor of Aveyron, the feral child brought from the French wilderness to Paris in an attempt to civilize him. It is the story of a boy who, at the tender age of five, had his throat slit in the forest and was left for dead.

In the title story of this rich new collection, T.C. Boyle has created so vivid and original a retelling of the story of Victor, the feral boy who was captured running naked through the forests of Napoleonic France, that it becomes not just new, but definitive: yes, this is how it must have been. The tale is by turns magical and moving, a powerful investigation of what it means to be human. There is perhaps no one better than T. C. Boyle at engaging, shocking, and ultimately gratifying his readers.

"The Star-Child" by the Irish author Oscar Wilde, first published in 1891, is a fantasy story about a handsome boy who for the first ten years of his life believes that he is truly the son of a star. As a result, he believes himself to be superior to everyone else and becomes vain, arrogant and cruel. When his real mother, a beggar woman, comes to the village where he lives, he wants nothing to do with her and mocks her for her ugliness. As punishment for his cruelty, he becomes monstrously ugly himself. He remains so until he shows kindness to others, even at the risk of his own life.

When a young orphan decides to ignore the kind teachings of the people who took him in, he finds that he hurts those who care about him most. Will he ever mend his ways - and when will it be too late?

Once upon a time, two poor woodcutters were making their way home through a great pine forest. It was winter and a night of bitter cold. The snow lay thick upon the ground and upon the branches of the trees; the frost kept snapping the little twigs on either side of them as they passed; and when they came to the Mountain Torrent, she was hanging motionless in air, for the Ice King had kissed her. Read in English, unabridged.

In a town full of suffering poor people, a swallow who was left behind after his flock flew off to Egypt for the winter meets the statue of the late "Happy Prince", who has never experienced true sorrow, for he lived in a palace where sorrow was not allowed to enter. Viewing various scenes of people suffering in poverty from his tall monument, the Happy Prince asks the swallow to take the ruby from his hilt, the sapphires from his eyes, and the gold leaf covering his body to give to the poor.