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Presents the adventures of Mowgli, a boy reared by a pack of wolves, and the wild animals of the jungle. Also includes other short stories set in India.
"One of those rare books that I felt I was actually living as I read it." —Michael Morpurgo
Now Chil the Kite brings home the night
That Mang the Bat sets free --
The herds are shut in byre and hut
For loosed till dawn are we.
This is the hour of pride and power,
Talon and tush and claw.
Oh, hear the call! -- Good hunting all
That keep the jungle Law!
Night Song in the Jungle
It was seven o'clock of a very warm evening in the Seeonee Hills when Father Wolf woke up from his day's rest, scratched himself, yawned, and spread out his paws one after the other to get rid of the sleepy feeling in their tips. Mother Wolf lay with her big gray nose dropped across her four tumbling, squealing cubs, and the moon shone into the mouth of the cave where they all lived. "Augrh!" said Father Wolf, "it is time to hunt again." And he was going to spring downhill when a little shadow with a bushy tail crossed the threshold and whined: "Good luck go with you, 0 Chief of the Wolves; and good luck and strong white teeth go with the noble children, that they may never forget the hungry in this world. "
It was the jackal -- Tabaqui the Dish-licker -- and the wolves of India despise Tabaqui because he runs about making mischief, and telling tales, and eating rags and pieces of leather from the village rubbish heaps. But they are afraid of him too, because Tabaqui, more than anyone else in the jungle, is apt to go mad, and then he forgets that he was ever afraid of anyone, and runs through the forest biting everything in his way. Even the tiger runs and hides when little Tabaqui goes mad, for madness is the most disgraceful thing that can overtake a wild creature. We call it hydrophobia,but they call it dewanee -- the madness -- and run.
"Enter, then, and look," said Father Wolf, stiffly, "but there is no food here."
"For a wolf, no," said Tabaqui, "but for so mean a person as myself a dry bone is a good feast. Who are we, the Gidur-log [the Jackal-People], to pick and choose?" He scuttled to the back of the cave, where he found the bone of a buck with some meat on it, and sat cracking the end merrily.
"All thanks for this good meal," he said, licking his lips. "How beautiful are the noble children! How large are their eyes! And so young too! Indeed, indeed, I might have remembered that the children of kings are men from the beginning."
Now, Tabaqui knew as well as anyone else that there is nothing so unlucky as to compliment children to their faces; and it pleased him to see Mother and Father Wolf look uncomfortable.
Tabaqui sat still, rejoicing in the mischief that he had made, and then he said spitefully:
"Shere Khan, the Big One, has shifted his hunting grounds. He will hunt among these hills for the next moon, so he has told me."
Shere Khan was the tiger who lived near the Wainganga River, twenty miles away.
"He has no right!" Father Wolf began angrily. "By the Law of the jungle he has no right to change his quarters without due warning. He will frighten every head of game within ten miles, and I -- I have to kill for two, these days."
"His mother did not call him Lungri [the Lame One] for nothing," said Mother Wolf, quietly. "He has been lame in one foot from his birth. That is why he has only killed cattle. Now the villagers of the Wainganga are angry with him, and he has come here to make our villagers angry. They will scour the jungle for him when he is far away, and we and our children must run when the grass is set alight. Indeed, we are very grateful to Shere Khan!"
"Shall I tell him of your gratitude?" said Tabaqui.
"Out!" snapped Father Wolf. "Out and hunt with thy master. Thou hast done harm enough for one night."
"I go," said Tabaqui, quietly. "Ye can hear Shere Khan below in the thickets. I might have saved myself the message."
Father Wolf listened, and below in the valley that ran down to a little river, he heard the dry, angry, snarly, singsong whine of a tiger who has caught nothing and does not care if all the jungle knows it.
"The fool!" said Father Wolf. "To begin a night's work with that noise! Does he think that our buck are like his fat Wainganga bullocks?"
"Hsh. It is neither bullock nor buck he hunts tonight," said Mother Wolf "It is Man." The whine had changed to a sort of humming purr that seemed to come from every quarter of the compass. It was the noise that bewilders woodcutters and gypsies sleeping in the open, and makes them run sometimes into the very mouth of the tiger.
"Man!" said Father Wolf, showing all his white teeth. "Faugh! Are there not enough beetles and frogs in the tanks that he must eat Man, and on our ground too!"
The Law of the jungle, which never orders anything without a reason, forbids every beast to eat Man except when he is killing to show his children how to kill, and then he must hunt outside the hunting grounds of his pack or tribe. The real reason for this is that man-killing means, sooner or later, the arrival of white men on elephants, with guns, and hundreds of brown men with gongs and rockets and torches. Then everybody in the jungle suffers. The reason the beasts give among themselves is that Man is the weakest and most defenseless of all living things, and it is unsportsmanlike to touch him. They say too -- and it is true -- that maneaters become mangy, and lose their teeth.
The purr grew louder, and ended in the full-throated "Aaarh!" of the tiger's charge.
Then there was a howl -- an untigerish howl -- from Shere Khan. "He has missed," said Mother Wolf "What is it?"
The Jungle Book. Copyright © by Rudyard Kipling. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.6732927
Posted March 12, 2011
This copy was atrocious in editing, spelling, format and anything else I can think of! It appeared to me that it had been copied by someone who didn' t know the English language. Although the price was cheap, it was too much for this copy. There were many cases of where a capital U was used in stead of double ll, symbols in stead of letters and very few pages without errors and many pages with more than one. Wasted money!
8 out of 11 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Are the two JUNGLE BOOKS (1895-96) by Rudyard Kipling for children or for adults? *** I say: for both. My six grandsons and two granddaughters are enthralled when I read to them of Bagheera the panther, Rikki-Tikki-Ravi the mongoose or Mowgli the man-cub raised by Father and Mother Wolf. And I myself have returned to Kipling after 50 years with renewed enthusiasm for his imagination, wisdom and deft ways to spin great yarns. *** Surprisingly the jungles of THE JUNGLE BOOKS are not just in Central India. They are wild places of Antarctica, Arctica and the great oceans. Kipling's jungles are "what if?" magical lands. They are border spaces where humans and animals are co-exist in varying degrees of noticing one other.What if animals were to communicate among themselves as well as we humans do? What if animals tamed by or captured by humans learned human languages and grasped human motivations? In "Servants of the Queen" we meet and hear the talk of Indian Army work beasts and fighting beasts assembled in the spring of 1885 to impress Abdur Rahman, visiting Amir of Afghanistan, an event personally witnessed and reported by young journalist Kipling. The tale begins: "It had been raining heavily for one whole month -- raining on a camp of thirty thousand men and thousands of camels, elephants, horses, bullocks, and mules all gathered together at a place called Rawal Pindi, to be reviewed by the VIceroy of India." *** Kipling, fortunately for us readers, "knew enough of beast-language -- not wild-beast language, of course, from the natives to know what he (a panicked camel frightened by a bad dream) was saying." We learn how each class of army animal sized up things, how well they had been trained in their various specialties (e.g., mules to haul mountain howitzers up the sides of mountains, cavalry horses to hold formations for their riders, etc.) and what they absorbed from the men their masters. A young mule asked the other beasts why they had to fight at all. "'Because we're told to,'" said the troop-horse with a snort of contempt." "'Orders,'" said an older mule. "'Hukm hai (It is an order),' said the camel with a gurgle." And the elephant and the bullock agreed. But who gives the orders? The man who walks at your head or who rides you! But who gives them orders, asked the young mule? The others agreed that the youngster wanted to know far too much. *** And so it goes in or near world-wide jungles where men and intelligent beasts live not too far apart or, as in the Indian Army, live in symbiosis. Great yarns. Open THE JUNGLE BOOKS at random and judge for yourself! -OOO-
7 out of 8 people found this review helpful.
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Posted March 20, 2011
The edditing was terrible.
6 out of 11 people found this review helpful.
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Posted March 1, 2001
The story the Jungle Book is a true timeless classic. The story of Mogli a young orphan who is trying to surrvive in the jungle after being orphaned has a wide variety of emotiones. Mogli a young child is ophaned after his parents are killed by a tiger, only he manages to survive. Mogli is befriended by Baheer a wise old panter and Baloo a lazy bear. Between the the two animals they try to teach Mojli of the dangers of the forest and try to help him get to the nearest man villag. On their Odessey the three encounter many dangers. A group of luticris orangatans who want Mogli to protect them from danger, Kaa a boa constricter who wants to make Mojli lunch, and Shere Khan who wants to kill Mojli before Mojli seakes revenge for the slaughter of his parents. The Intense climax comes in a final show down between Shere Khan and Baheer, the fight leaves you on the edge of your seat and you wonder Will Mogli make out of the jungle alive, or parish such as his parents. The Jungle Book supports all the content that it takes to make a classic, and I would highly suggest, Rutyard Kippling made a true master piece.
6 out of 6 people found this review helpful.
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Posted February 12, 2012
Good !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
5 out of 6 people found this review helpful.
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Posted January 10, 2012
People dont like the book cause theyve seen the disney movie first and expect the book to be the same. If one read the book before seeing the movie they might like the book more than the movie!
4 out of 5 people found this review helpful.
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Posted December 27, 2011
Good
4 out of 7 people found this review helpful.
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Posted September 15, 2011
No text was provided for this review.
1747717
Posted January 17, 2011
Nicely formatted tales with the wit and historical perspective associated in Kipling.
4 out of 4 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Legends are made from legends. Rudyard Kipling dug deep into the tales of the jungle from his years living in India, and drew from them the kinds of stories that live forever.
"The Jungle Book" is more than how Mowgli, the man cub, learns to live and survive amongst enemies like Shere Khan. The intense mongoose vs cobra "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi," also well-known, is here, as are several lesser-known and unrelated adventures.
Richly written, with details and contexts unfamiliar to Western readers, "The Jungle Book" lifts imagination and language beautifully. Poetic, and written in a literary style, it shines above most modern prose.
This is the stuff of afternoon stories read to older boys and girls. Young teens will while away rainy evenings, unwilling to part until finished. Sometimes scary and always exciting, Kipling also uses the book to teach lessons much greater than a jungle in India.
When chapters were first read to me many years ago, I listened gawk-eyed, listening intently for as long as my mother would read. I read it with different eyes now, but no less a young boy as I worry how Baloo will handle the Bandar-Log monkeys.
It isn't perfect. A few scientific details are fudged (wolf pack breeding structure, for example), but nothing that matters in the big picture. Kipling will have you in the palm of his hand, even though it was first published over 100 years ago.
May "The Jungle Book" by Rudyard Kipling be as amazing to you as it has been to me.
--Brockeim
4 out of 4 people found this review helpful.
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Posted August 26, 2011
This is the best book ever :)
3 out of 5 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.not as good as a purchased copy, but good for a free scan
3 out of 4 people found this review helpful.
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Posted May 10, 2008
I read this book as a child and now I have introduced my child to it. It seems that everyone who reads this book simply loves it and the original movie from 1942 is a great representation of this as well.
3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.
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Posted July 29, 2005
When I read this book for my fifth grade summer reading, I enjoyed the story of Mowilgi because the battle that came out with a happy ending. Shere Kan and he learned how to surrvive in the jungle. Shere Kan was evil and he teased Mowilgi that no matter what,he would eat him.
3 out of 4 people found this review helpful.
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Posted July 29, 2004
This is a book that you can read again and again. My favorite is the story of Rikki Tikki Tavi.
3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.
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Posted November 1, 2007
The Jungle Book was a great book to read. I thought that it would be a children's book, but I found that it could also be a great book for anyone to read! I got sucked into right from chapter one. Mowgli, the main character, was found and raised by wolves. He then was taught the Laws of the Jungle by Bagheera, the black panther, and Baloo, the bear. All through the book they run into some sort of trouble, but always manage to get out. Like when the Bandar-Log, the apes, take him for hostage and take him clear across the jungle to the Cold Lairs which an intense battle takes place. I would recommend this book to not only younger people, but to everyone. It is action-packed and it totally stole my attention and grabbed my heart at the end when Mowgli's enemy, Shere Kan, was taken over by him. This book has some flaws like the animals from the jungle don't really match where it takes place. I would give it four stars. I still think it is a good book, and I would recommend everyone that reads this review to read this book!
2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
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Posted May 11, 2013
I never did that befor
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted December 18, 2012
THE BOOK IS ALWAYS BETTER THAN THE MOVIE! Exept for the hobbit, of course. TITLE YOUR REVIEW "HOBBIT LOVER" IF YOU LOVED THE HOBBIT.
1 out of 4 people found this review helpful.
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Posted June 1, 2013
I Also Recommend:
Excellent book. Buy it. Don't listen to those negative commenters.
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Posted May 23, 2013
The Disney movie is better. Oh and CREEPY COVER!!!!! AH!!!!
0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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