Two Little Savages

Seton, Ernest Thompson, 1860-1946Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 4.2
Word count
610K words
Chapters
62

Tags

English Originals Children's Literature North American NatureOutdoor PracticeScience EnlightenmentNature ObservationWilderness SurvivalFriendship AdventureComing of AgeGrowing UpYouthful VibeHands-On Practice

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Two Little Savages by Ernest Thompson SetonAuthor: Seton, Ernest Thompson, 1860-1946,Language: English, Class: PZ: Language and Literatures: Juvenile belles lettres, Release Date: Sep 19, 2004

Editor's review

A representative children's book by Seton, telling the coming-of-age story of two boys who imitate Native American life in the wild, build camps, and observe animals. The book blends natural history knowledge with adventure narrative, offering detailed observations of forests, birds, and beasts while portraying boys testing the boundaries between freedom and rules. Written for young readers, it moves at a brisk pace, and traditional editions often include the author's own illustrations. As a public-domain e-book, it suits family read-alouds or nature education: children can follow the protagonists in learning to identify tracks and build simple shelters, while adults can use it to discuss the relationship between humans and nature and the period limitations of early nature writing.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Not a good fit for

Reading tips

  1. Arrange family read-alouds chapter by chapter, and after each chapter have the child retell what the boys did and discovered
  2. Keep a nature journal, imitating the book's approach to record local plant and animal observations
  3. While reading, pay attention to the depiction of Native Americans and discuss with children the differences in period perspectives
  4. Pair with simple outdoor activities, such as building small shelters or observing insects at night, to deepen the experience

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57
  58. 58
  59. 59
  60. 60
  61. 61
  62. 62

FAQ

What age is this book suitable for? It is better suited for independent reading by young people over ten, or for children over eight reading with parental guidance. The adventure plot is highly engaging, but some natural history knowledge and period language require adult explanation; family read-alouds can lower the threshold and spark discussion.
Does the book have educational value? Yes. It combines field observation, animal habits, and youth growth, stimulating children's interest in nature and hands-on ability. At the same time, its depiction of Native American lifeways bears the marks of its era, which adults can use to guide children in recognizing stereotypes in literature.
What is the e-book reading experience like? The public-domain e-book is easy to search for characters and terms, and convenient to print in sections for shared reading materials. However, if the original edition includes illustrations, the e-book layout may be less直观 than a paper book; readers who like to look at illustrations while reading may want to find an illustrated edition for comparison.

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About the author

Seton, Ernest Thompson, 1860-1946 Author

Ernest Thompson Seton (1860-1946) was a writer and creator of wildlife-themed works active in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, though details of his life remain limited in publicly available sources. The library holds twenty-one of his works, including Two Little Savages, Wild Animals I Have Known, The Biography of a Grizzly, The Trail of the Sandhill Stag, and Rolf in the Woods, some of which also appear in Finnish translations such as Harmaan karhun elämäntarina and Villejä eläimiä. These works show that his writing centered on wild animals and natural life, often taking individual animals as protagonists and blending storytelling with observation in a plain yet engaging style that has had a lasting influence on the animal-story genre.