klord3 's review for:

The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling

4.0

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The first several chapters of this book were what most of us, who saw the Disney movie as a child, think of as the Jungle book: the story of Mowgli a child lost in the jungle and taken in by wolves and taught by his wolf family and bear and panther mentors the ways of the jungle. But with a lot more of an edge than the Disney version (big surprise). Rudyard Kipling wrote these stories in the late 19th century and for some reason the humor took me by surprise. I particularly liked Bagheera's dry wit. Less of a surprise was the brutality. In these stories Rudyard Kipling revered the wild Jungle animals and Demonized to some degree man's treatment of them. This was true in the other stories as well, the killing of wild animals by humans was frowned upon, unless the animal was deadly and evil and trying to kill them. Even then things were usually settled by other animals or those (like Mowgli) who belonged in that world. But there was also a reverence for the teamwork of humans and animals, which included elephants (which were wild, but tamed). In some cases his anthropomorphism of the animals really drew upon their natural behavior. But in the case of the evil animals rubbed me the wrong way. While many predators were "good" in his stories the "bad guys" who weren't humans were always predators. Sheer Kan the lame tiger and Nag the Cobra. Knowing the fate of these species today made me a little uneasy, but it makes a great story. It is clear why these are classics, but they have been softened greatly in their more recent retellings.