Wild Children

Rating:
Summary: the wild children
Review: This historical fiction book is a very touching book to read. It examines the life of the homeless children in Russia after the Civil War and shows how life really was like back in those days of oppression, poverty and hunger. This book is about a young boy named Alex, whose family has been taken away by the Communists. He ends up living with a band of other homeless children. Through living with them, he experiences all sorts of things and realizes that even among these fierce children who have to survive, goodness can still shine through the smog of the goverment's control.

Rating:
Summary: the wild children
Review: This historical fiction book is a very touching book to read. It examines the life of the homeless children in Russia after the Civil War and shows how life really was like back in those days of oppression, poverty and hunger. This book is about a young boy named Alex, whose family has been taken away by the Communists. He ends up living with a band of other homeless children. Through living with them, he experiences all sorts of things and realizes that even among these fierce children who have to survive, goodness can still shine through the smog of the goverment's control.When the Soviet Union was in charge, a young boy Alex, woke to find his family had been taken away. That's just one part of this great book. ''The Wild Children'' is about how Alex's family is taken away, and he must survive the harsh winter.When he finds a band of boys [the wild children] he starts to live a life of crime and hunger. This book just took me away with all the excitement. ''The Wild Children'' has action all the way through. I could not put this book down or out of sight.To find out more you have to read the book.

Rating:
Summary: Haunting tales of the bezprizorny
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: A Must Read Book
Review: When the Soviet Union was in charge, a young boy Alex, woke to find his family had been taken away. That's just one part of this great book. ''The Wild Children'' is about how Alex's family is taken away, and he must survive the harsh winter.He decides to see his uncle in upper Germany, but when he arrives he gets the news that his uncle has been taken away too.When he finds a band of boys [the wild children] he starts to live a life of crime and hunger.
This book just took me away with all the excitement. ''The Wild Children'' has action all the way through. I could not put this book down or out of sight.