Product Description

Mowgli, the man-cub who is brought up by wolves in the jungles of Central India, is one of the greatest literary myths ever created. As he embarks on a series of thrilling escapades, Mowgli encounters such unforgettable creatures as Bagheera, the graceful black panther, and Shere Khan, the tiger with the blazing eyes. Other animal stories range from the simple heroism found in 'Rikki-tikki-tavi' to the macabre comedy 'The Undertakers'. A rich and complex fable of human life, Kipling's enduring classic dazzles the imagination with its astonishing descriptive powers and lively sense of adventure.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #22333 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-27
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

About the Author
Born in Bombay, India, but raised in England from the age of five, Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) is today best known as the author of such classics of literature as The Jungle Book (1894), Kim (1902) and Just So Stories (1902). He returned to India in 1882 to become a journalist and local newspaper editor and began writing supernatural stories set in his native continent. Kipling was the first British writer to be award the Nobel Prize for Literature, in 1907.

Customer Reviews

One of the greatest children's books ever - read it!
...The Jungle Book [is] one of the most thrilling and vivid fantasies ever written. Forget about the [...] Disney version, in which Kaa is the baddie, this stuff makes your hair stand on end, it's so alive to what it must feel like to be an animal. Mowgli's arrival at the wolves' cave, pursued by the evil tiger Shere Khan, his upbringing by the wolves, his adventures in the jungle and attempt to go back to living among men is full of savagery and beauty and excitement. Interleaved among the Mowgli stories are other great animal tales - about Rikki Tikki Tavi the mongoose who takes on two deadly cobras living in an Indian garden, and fights them to the death; and about a white seal who finds the one place where seals can be safe.
You do need a bit of patience in the beginning with Kipling, but he's worth it.

Undeservedly unfashionable - a true, timeless classic
Kipling has long since ceased to be a fashionable writer. Accused of being racist (for his time, class and background he was in fact highly liberal in his views) and jingoistic (he lived the days when loyalty to Queen and Country was still called patriotism), he has fallen out of favour with the literati. Despite decades of continual snubbing, his books live on and his poem, IF was recently voted by the British public as their favourite, unashamedly sentimental it may seem now but it still stands as some of the best advice a father could give to his son, which was how and why it came to be.

His books also have that ultimate mark of any classic, the ability to be enjoyed as much by grown-ups as by children. The jungle book is most probably familiar to the world now through the Disney cartoon, which bears all the relationship to the original book as Muppet Treasure Island does to Robert Louis Stevenson. The real book is much darker, much more dangerous, much more exciting and much, much more enjoyable. Kipling takes anthropomorphism to its artistic ultimate and, within the cadre of jungle animals reflects human characteristics both good and bad: the sagacity of Baloo, the wisdom of Bagheera, the nobility of Akela, the independence of Kaa, the rottenness of Shere Khan and the mindless brutality of the Dhole. Humans, by contrast, fare rather poorly being divorced from their surroundings and, unlike the jungle characters, are shallow and act with neither motivation beyond self-interest nor principle.

So impressed was Lord Baden Powell that he made this book the basis for the cub scouts (as he did with another of Kipling's masterpieces, Kim for the scouts themselves). The books may contain Victorian values, but these are the best of Victorian values and the ones that define a civilized society, even if they, like Kipling, have become unfashionable. Above all though, the Jungle Book is a ripping yarn, a page-turner, a plot-boiler and, uniquely amongst Kipling's prolific output, a spawner of sequels; something that Walt Disney obviously recognised. The only words of warning or discouragement that I would utter is that the book, as with all the Mowgli stories, can be quite sinister and not suitable for the same age range as the cartoon and, speaking of the cartoon, be prepared to despise its fluffy, trite Americanised bowdlerisms forever once you have read the original; so, if you adore Disney and want to go on loving it, perhaps you should stay away from the literature from which it stole its ideas.

Re-ignites the beauty of story telling
Having been of the target age when Disney's enterpritation of the stories of Mowgli game to the big screen I decided to track the source of the magical tale. This book doesn't just contain the stories that follow Mowgli's adventures in the jungle, and quite different to the Disney version they are, but many other exciting tales, everyone captivating for its entirety. Whether it is the moral issues that are raised throughout the stories, or simply the value of a great story that you are after, this book has truely stood the test of time with shining colours.