Better Than Disney I still love the cartoon version, but how much better it would have been if the good folks at Disney had followed the original story! This collection of stories paint a rich portrait of life in India under Queen Victoria's reign, for the soldiers. (I love Rudyard Kipling's book Kim for a look at the native life and a few of the cultures there). The book tells this story from the standpoint of the animals. Starting with the story of Mowgli and his wolf pack then his brief return to life in a village; Rikki Tikki Tavi, the brave Mongoose who saves his English family; The white seal who finds a safe harbor for his fellows away from slaughter by Man; and the brave animals who serve in India in the war. I can't speak about the significance of his writing. All I can say is, I thoroughly enjoyed the stories I read as a child. I am discovering his other books as an adult, and this is the only book of his I read as a child because of the expense of buying them. If it wasn't in our local library, I couldn't read it. (I did find armloads of books at every visit). My sister took me with her weekly to the library, and my parents steered me towards the Classics and bought me books I would reread until the next library visit. I am happy that Mama bought this one, which I read and reread many times.

Growing up in the 1970s, Disney's animated film version of this late 19th century children's classic was a seminal film. I had never read the book before now though. It's a collection of stories, not a novel, and Mowgli's growing up and adventures in the jungle with Baloo the bear and Bagheera the black panther, the wolves led by Akela, and fighting off Shere Khan the tiger occupy only the first third of so of the book, with notably Shakespearean sounding dialogue from all characters and lots of illustrations. The rest of consists of unrelated tales about the White Seal, the mongoose Rikki-Tikki-Tavi and his battles with cobras, and elephants and some other lesser stories and songs. I thought the Mowgli sections were the best, or perhaps that's just because they are the ones I am most familiar with. I also liked the White Seal leading his fellow seals to an island where they could be free from being culled by humans, the Rikki-Tikki-Tavi story which was quite memorable and bloody, and the elephants' "dance" sequence, but some of the rest made rather less of an impression on me. As a consequence, very good in parts, but felt a little disjointed.