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Title: Jungle Book: Stories by P. Craig Russell, J. Craig Russell, Rudyard Kipling ISBN: 1-56163-152-3 Publisher: NBM Publishing, Inc. Pub. Date: January, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.27 (22 reviews)
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
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: A book of wonder
Comment: This was probably one of my most favorite books as a young child if not my favorite. The way Kipling shows the struggle of this young boy in the jungle is amazing. He fails to leave out any detail and throughout the whole story your totally caught up in it without one point of boredom. I recommend this to any parent looking for a good book to read to their children or to have their kids read. Kipling is a great author and after doing a report on him and reading some of his other works I recommend those as well, especially A White Man's Burden. If your looking for books by a author who mixes fiction with truth, action and adventure with tales that bring in more serious aspects Kipling is the author for you.
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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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