The Jungle Book shows Kipling's writing for children at its best. It is a collection of short stories and poems revolving round the boy Mowgli, who was raised by a pack of wolves in India. We meet the tiger Shere Khan who attacked and drove off Mowgli's parent, Bagheera, the black panher, Baloo, 'the sleepy brown bear', and the evil python, Kaa. Other stories include Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, The White Seal and Toomai of the Elephants, and the book contains the original illustrations of J. Lockwood Kipling (Rudyard's father) and W. H. Drake.


About the Author:

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was named after the Staffordshire reservoir near Leek beside which his parents became engaged. He was born in India, and spent the first six years of his life there, acquiring Hindustani as a second language and living in a bungalow like that in The Jungle Book. He was then sent to a boarding house in England with his sister Alice, where he had a miserable time until he was sent to The United Services College at Westward Ho! in Devon, the model for Stalky & Co. He left school at sixteen to return to India and work on The Civil and Military Gazette in Lahore, and his familiarity with all classes of society provided him with material for Barrack Room Ballads and Plain Tales from the Hills. In 1889 he returned to England and in 1891 published his novel The Light That Failed, and married Caroline (Carrie) Balestier the following year. They returned to her home Brattleboro, Vermont, where Kipling wrote the two Jungle Books and Captains Courageous. In 1896 the family returned to England, where Kipling continued to write prolifically, and was the first Englishman to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907. He later years were darkened by the death of his son John at the Battle of Loos in 1915.