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.
(Reviewed:11-May-00)
Grade: (A)
Websites:
Rudyard Kipling Links:
-Rudyard
Kipling (1865-1936)(kirjasto)
-Kipling Society
homepage
-The
Nobel Prize in Literature 1907 (Official Site)
-Rudyard
Kipling Winner of the 1907 Nobel Prize in Literature (Nobel Prize Internet
Archive)
-Rudyard
Kipling: An Overview (Victorian Web)
-AITLC
Guide to Rudyard Kipling (The ACCESS INDIANA Teaching &
Learning Center)
-BIO:
Kipling: a Brief Biography (David Cody, Associate Professor of
English, Hartwick College, Victorian Web)
-Rudyard
Kipling (1865-1936)(Ben Freer)
-Rudyard
Kipling (Spartacus)
-Rudyard
Kipling
-Rudyard
Kipling and Scouting
-ETEXT:
The Jungle Books (Project Gutenberg)
-ANNOTATED
ETEXT: The Jungle Book (Self Knowledge)
-ETEXTS:
Rudyard Kipling (Project Gutenberg)
-ETEXTS:
A COMPLETE COLLECTION OF POEMS BY Rudyard Kipling
-ETEXTS:
Links to Etexts of (Joseph) Rudyard Kipling (Mumbai/Bombay)
-ARTICLE:
Marlboro Journal; 1892 Bank Box Opens A Lid on Kipling's Past
(FOX BUTTERFIELD, The New York Times)
-ESSAY:
Rudyard Kipling & the god of things as they are (John
Derbyshire, New Criterion)
-ESSAY:
Diamonds are forever? Kipling's imperialism (Denis Judd, History Today)
-ESSAY:
Summary of the Mowgli Stories
-ESSAY:
Rudyard Kipling and Tacoma (Tacoma Public Library)
-ESSAY:
Kipling and Freemasonry (Grand Lodge Webmaster, Grand Lodge of British
Columbia)
-REVIEW:
of THE JUNGLE BOOK By Rudyard Kipling. Illustrated by Michael Foreman
GUNGA DIN By Rudyard Kipling. Illustrated by Robert Andrew Parker (Jonathan
Cott, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
of RUDYARD KIPLING A Life By Harry Ricketts (RICHARD BERNSTEIN, NY
Times)
-REVIEW:
John Bayley: Paleface, NY Review of Books
Rudyard Kipling and His
World by Kingsley Amis
Kipling: The Glass, the
Shadow and the Fire by Philip Mason
-REVIEW:
V.S. Pritchett: A Gentle-Violent Man, NY Review of Books
The Strange Ride of Rudyard
Kipling: His Life and Works by Angus Wilson
-REVIEW:
V. S. Pritchett: Contradictory Kipling, NY Review of Books
Rudyard Kipling by Lord
Birkenhead
-REVIEW:
of QUEST FOR KIM By Peter Hopkirk (RICHARD BERNSTEIN, NY times)
FILM:
-BUY IT: The
Jungle Book (1967)(Amazon.com)
-Review
of RUDYARD KIPLING'S THE JUNGLE BOOK 1994 (Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times)
Book-related and General Links:
Comments:
Orrin welcomes reader comments on his reviews.
Add yours here.
The Ben Freer site isn't a Kipling site anymore . . .
- Tim
- Jul-01-2008, 15:27
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