Review of "The Wolf Girls" by Jane Yolen, Heidi Elisabet Y Stemple, Roger Roth

This is a true mystery story that will intrigue young readers. On the other hand, you need to be sure that your young reader is old enough not to be frightened by the story.

In 1920 a missionary brought two children to an orphanage in India. One of the girls was about two and the other about eight. The man who brought them to the mission claimed that he was a Hindu shaman.

Abandoned children were not unusual in that area in the 1920's, but these two caused an unusual amount of rumors to spread. The missionary finally admitted that he was no holy man, but that he himself found the girls living with jungle wolves. The girls were sick and very dirty. The doctor could only save the eldest. Word got out about the surviving wolf-girl, and people began to arrive to see her out of curiosity.

The lush illustrations show the background of the sister's former life in the wilds and at the orphanage. The mystery is sort of solved, but never do we know where the girls truly came from and how they got to be raised by wolves or if they really were.

Truth is always stranger than fiction.