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Title: The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling ISBN: 0-8125-0469-0 Publisher: Tor Books Pub. Date: 15 February, 1992 Format: Mass Market Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $2.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.27 (22 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A True Original
Comment: The Jungle Books are usually marketed as juvenile fiction. True, this is essential reading for children, but it's even deeper when you read it as an adult.
Although "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" and "The White Seal" are just as good as the least of the Mowgli stories, it is the various tales of the boy raised in the jungles of India that are - and justifiably - the heart of the collection.
As a baby, Mowgli is found and raised by a clan of wolves and three godfatherly mentors who each teach him about life in different ways - Baloo the Bear, who teaches him the technical laws he'll need to survive; Kaa the Python, the nearly archtypal figure who teaches him even deeper lessons; and Bagheera the Panther, who perhaps loves Mowgli most of all but understands all too well the implications of the ambiguous humanity of the boy he's come to care for.
The stories have it all, from the alternately humorous and frightening "Kaa's Hunting", where Mowgli learns an important lesson about friendship and it's responsibility, to the epic "Red Dog" that reads like something out of Homer, to "Letting in the Jungle" which, without giving anything away contains a disturbing paragraph that's both glaring and a long time in coming if you've read between the lines in the previous Mowgli stories and yet at the same time so subtle you can almost miss it's importance.
If you didn't read it as a child, read it now. If you did, read it again as an adult.
Rating: 5
Summary: great stories for young and old
Comment: Since he wrote these stories during the several years he spent in Brattleboro, VT, we of the North Country have a particular affinity for Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Books. The most familiar are the Mowgli tales, basis for the very good Disney movie. Mowgli is an Indian infant who is lost in the jungle after Shere Khan (the tiger) kills his family. Bagheera (the black panther) places him with a wolf family that has a newborn litter. Mowgli's new "parents" and Bagheera and Baloo (the brown bear) sponsor him for membership in the Wolf Pack and, much to Shere Khan's chagrin, he is admitted. Mowgli is raised according to Jungle Law, but all the while Shere Khan is plotting his revenge and ingratiating himself with the younger wolves. Eventually, he leads a rebellion against Akela, the pack's aging leader and attacks Mowgli, who beats him away with a burning firebrand. In these and the several other Mowgli stories--there are some prequels--Kipling strikes a nice balance between anthropomorphizing the animals and understanding Mowgli's natural superiority.
Also appearing in this collection is a story I've loved since I first saw the Classic Cartoon version--Rikki Tikki Tavi. It tells the story of an intrepid young mongoose and his life or death battle to protect an Indian villa from a couple of particularly unpleasant cobras. Rikki Tikki Tavi has always seemed to me to be one of the great heroes in all of literature.
These are great stories for young and old. For folks who worry about Kipling's potentially imperialist, racist or racialist overtones (see review), rest assured, these tales are free of such themes. They offer an excellent opportunity to introduce kids to the work of a true master storyteller.
GRADE: A
Rating: 5
Summary: WELL BEYOND DISNEY
Comment: The Jungle Book
When we say "The Jungle Book" most of us invariably think of Disney's films, both animated and live action, that have become the norm for Rudyard Kipling's immortal children's stories. While the Disney interpretation is fun and enchanting, it makes a dramatic departure from the actual stories and takes considerable creative license in telling just a part of the Kipling stories. Even what we get from Disney falls considerably short of the applicable parts of Kipling's original that Disney used. What? Kaa, the snake, as Mowgli's friend and powerful ally? What? A deeper story of Mowgli's experience as a wolf and his relationships with Mother wolf and Father wolf? Oh yes, much, much more.
Kipling's original masterpiece also includes several other wonderful chapters about the continuing adventures of Mowgli and also adds the marvelous tale of "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi," the heroic mongoose whose battles with wicked cobras in an Indian garden easily matches Mowgli's showdowns with Shere Khan.
The book also includes the tale of "The White Seal." This short chapter of "The Jungle Book(s)" provides a wonderful commentary, in the form of animal parable, on human society, competition, male ego and human pride. Our hero, Kotick, the white seal, through his fearless explorations and his willingness to fight for a dream, changes the minds of his parents, his peers and his society for the better. The invitation to each of us is very clear to find and free the white seal that exists in all of us.
Don't get balled up in the notion that "The Jungle Book" is just for kids. A look beneath Kipling's wonderful prose reveals, like most great children's classics, that the author is using the unintimidating forum of children's literature to speak to kids of all ages with the hope that somehow we'll all finally get it.
Buy the book, read it, read it to the kids you know and learn the lesson.
Douglas McAllister
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Title: Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling, Barry Moser ISBN: 0688139574 Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Pub. Date: 01 September, 1996 List Price(USD): $24.99 |
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Title: Rikki-Tikki-Tavi by Jerry Pinkney, Rudyard Kipling ISBN: 0688143202 Publisher: HarperCollins Pub. Date: 26 September, 1997 List Price(USD): $16.99 |
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Title: Treasure Island (Signet Classic) by Robert Louis Stevenson, New American Library Signet ISBN: 0451527046 Publisher: Signet Classics Pub. Date: 01 December, 1998 List Price(USD): $3.95 |
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Title: The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame, Ernest H. Shepard ISBN: 068971310X Publisher: Aladdin Paperbacks Pub. Date: 01 March, 1989 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
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Title: Kim (Penguin Classics) by Rudyard Kipling, Edward W. Said ISBN: 0140183523 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 August, 1992 List Price(USD): $7.00 |
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