The Wolf Girls: An Unsolved Mystery From History
By Jane Yolen & Heidi Elisabat Yolen Stemple Published in 2001 32 Pages
Out of print, but by all means secure a copy. They can typically be found at reasonable prices used.
This book is one of a series of four. The others treat the topics of the Salem Witch Trials, the lost colony of Roanoke, and the Mary Celeste. This particular book stands head and shoulders above the rest in the series, yet all share the same format.
These books are designed to encourage and exercise the critical thinking skills of kids. Our narrator is a young girl who likes to investigate historical mysteries. The book is formatted like an investigation. There is the text with illustrations, and then there are the girl's research notes superimposed over parts of the pages. Additionally, there are mock post it notes that detail the definitions that the girl had to "look up". Then reader is invited to put together the text and notes in order to form a theory about what really happened.
I think what separates this book from the others in the series is the amount of contradictory information that the reader must consider. I feel that this book demands a higher level of thinking than the others in
the series.
The mystery that this book treats is from India in 1920. A missionary took in two children at his orphanage. Allegedly they were raised by wolves. The missionary published an account, put one of the girls on display, and collected donations for the orphanage. The narrator's research notes inform the reader of conflicting accounts, background information, scientific knowledge, and quotes from the missionary's journal. With all of this information, the readers are amply equipped to form and support their own conclusions.
Four theories are considered at the end of the book, and readers are encouraged to form alternate interpretations. Each of the four theories is presented with a series of questions that the reader must answer from the evidence in order to support or critique that particular conclusion. This format also illustrates how one would go about supporting an alternative explanation.
In terms of using this book, one possibility is to make index cards that each contain a bit of information or evidence to consider. Then you can use four pieces of chart paper to represent each of the theories and have the students paste the cards under the theory that they think the evidence supports. Then you can have the students discuss what possibilities they believe and how the available evidence supports it.
Ironically, there is a more recent (and far inferior) picture book on the topic of the wolf girls. It is titled "When I Met the Wolf Girls". This book is a actually a step backwards because its author did not do any critical thinking at all in scrutinizing the accounts of this case, and she took the missionary's claims at face value. It would be a good exercise to have students use what they have learned form the Yolen work to evaluate this later book.
