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A review by thaurisil
The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling
3.0
I read this book because someone told me that the dress I was wearing reminded him of the cover of the Jungle Book, and then followed up by saying that it was a good book and I should read it. I have never watched the movie and so didn’t have the preconceived notions that many other people do.
This is a collection of short stories. The first three feature Mowgli, a boy who grows up amongst a pack of wolves, and it seems like the rest of the book is going to focus on him, but then the later stories feature other animal characters in various settings. There’s Kotick, a white seal looking for a new safe home for his brethren, Rikki Tikki Tavi, a mongoose defending a family from cobras, Toomai, a boy who watches elephants dance, and an unnamed human soldier eavesdropping to some military animals. Each story is preceded and followed by a poem or song.
The stories are set in India, where Kipling spent the first six years of his life, and then another six-and-a-half when he was older. It is a book written for children, and can be enjoyed at a child’s level, yet it does bring in very adult themes of the injustice of white supremacy and the folly of man in trying to control animals. It arouses in the reader an awe of nature and of animals, which, despite our best efforts to tame, do have a will of their own.
This is a collection of short stories. The first three feature Mowgli, a boy who grows up amongst a pack of wolves, and it seems like the rest of the book is going to focus on him, but then the later stories feature other animal characters in various settings. There’s Kotick, a white seal looking for a new safe home for his brethren, Rikki Tikki Tavi, a mongoose defending a family from cobras, Toomai, a boy who watches elephants dance, and an unnamed human soldier eavesdropping to some military animals. Each story is preceded and followed by a poem or song.
The stories are set in India, where Kipling spent the first six years of his life, and then another six-and-a-half when he was older. It is a book written for children, and can be enjoyed at a child’s level, yet it does bring in very adult themes of the injustice of white supremacy and the folly of man in trying to control animals. It arouses in the reader an awe of nature and of animals, which, despite our best efforts to tame, do have a will of their own.