The Jungle Book is Great

Having read only the first story in The Jungle Book, I grabbed a copy of “All the Mowgli Stories” off our shelf, which collects the Mowgli bits from both of Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Books. What great stuff! It’s brutal without being gory, fantastic but grounded in reality, and only a little bit totally racist. (Kipling’s “white English are the most clever and moral” shtick is lame, but that’s how imperialists justify their actions, and it rarely plays into the stories.)

It is amusing that hunting, death, and violence are not shirked from at all—there’s a very vivid description of skinning a certain tiger—but discussion of Mowgli’s marriage is glossed over as a “story for grown-ups.” Guess we’ve been uptight about sex but not violence far longer than television or movies!

Anyway, I’m only about halfway through the Mowgli stories, but as I have a bent for fantasy and the outdoors, I’m almost ashamed I haven’t read these earlier, especially since they can be had for free online. I look forward to going back after finishing this Mowgli collection and reading the other Jungle Book stories that don’t star the man-cub. More kid’s literature should involve hunting and killing your enemy.