Customer Reviews

The Jungle Book (Illustrated Classics)

5 star:		(66)
4 star:		(24)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This unabridged edition includes both Jungle Book and Jungle Book 2. The stories are a wonderful length for read alouds. The Jungle Book is, of course, a classic and not in need of a review; however, if your only exposure to the Jungle Book is Disney, please give this a try. I wanted to commend Sterling Publishers on making a quality, affordable edition of this and other classics. The paper quality was nice, not thin or translucent. The font is also pleasant--not to small or cramped. I know this may seem faint praise, but so many classics collections are very poorly executed. The price is also very agreeable--only slightly more than a paperback.

My favorite books from childhood have always been Milne's "The World of Pooh" and Kipling's "The Jungle Book". Over the years I have purchased many copies of each as presents. Both can be difficult to find in versions unaltered from the original. I have found this to be particularly true in the case of The Jungle Book. Some folks just don't seem to get that Kipling had a pretty good handle on what he was doing. One does not tamper with a Masterpiece.

This version is the real thing. It reads word for word the same as the tattered, 40-year-old copy that I first read when I was eight years old. Add illustrations by Robert Ingpen that faithfully capture the emotion of the story and you have a real winner. For those who appreciate The Jungle Book as it was BEFORE it was adulterated by Mr. Disney and friends, this is a very worthy effort.

I bought this book to read with my 9 year-old son. We have the Disney books and movies at home but since he is an avid reader and I love Rudyard Kipling I thought it was time to find him the real deal and this book is it. I like everything about it, the font type, the illustrations, and the writing is, well... Rudyard Kipling. Beautiful, rich, provocative language that unleashes a child's imagination. My son and I devoured it in a few nights and after we were done it led to a really deep discussion on the differences with the Disney's version. It was a welcomed reminder that we can understimate both our children's capacity to digest the classics and their appeal to them.

This is undoubtedly a beautiful book, but it should definitely be noted that it only contains the first half of Mowgli's story (i.e., through Shere Khan chapter only) - the text seems unabridged that far, but parts of both Jungle Books are missing - which I for one was misled about from other review(s).

Just read the previous review (about 'simplifying' the
language in Jungle Book). I am reading the ORIGINAL
text JB to my eight year old son (for over a week now),
and he's not once indicated that the language puzzles
him. He did ask me why Mowgli uses thee and thou
and wouldst while talking with the animals, but
accepted my explanation without demur.

Reminds me of the lines from an Elinor Wylie poem
"Our mutable tongue is like the sea
Curled wave and shattering thunder-fit;
Dangle in strings of sand shall he
Who smooths the ripples out of it."
Say it out loud, and feel what it does to your
mouth and face - that's what Kipling's prose
does.

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

The Jungle Book (Great Illustrated Classics)- Malvina Vogel Adaptation.
Totally agree with previous review.
- How dare she?! - it was my only thought when I opened The Jungle Book (Great Illustrated Classics) - How dare she to take the gorgeous, Nobel Prize winning language and replace it with her bloody nonsense?! And put the Kipling's name on the cover? Does she think children (for whom this book apparently meant) are primitive morons? Think again, miss Vogel. Think again.

This collection is probably the single best starting place for reading Kipling, especially for younger or teen readers (though the very youngest would probably enjoy his _Just So Stories_ more). These stories are great reads, enjoyable by all ages.

Fans of the movie will find a more complex work here -- not "darker," but more ambiguous; the three stories from this collection that have generally been adapted into other media, and that most readers think of when they think of "The Jungle Book", focus on outcast human infant, Mowgli, who is abandoned as an infant in the jungle and raised by wolves, and primarily tell the story of his search for a "place" within the wolf pack, the Jungle, and the human world, and his outsider status in all three realms. Perhaps because they focus almost entirely on the Indian jungle, or perhaps because they're aimed at children, these stories are also largely free of the undertone (overtone?) of imperialism that runs through much of Kipling's work for adults.

It has, of course, been massively influential on later writers, from Edgar Rice Burrough's _Tarzan_ to Neil Gaiman's _The Graveyard Book_. The various morals contained within the "Mowgli" stories were also taken as a motivational book within the Scouting movement (reading this helped me understand why I had to memorize "Akela" when I was a cub scout).

While only three stories in this collection focus on Mowgli, Kipling did write a second collection, "The Second Jungle Book," which is almost entirely comprised of Mowgli stories, and which I would highly recommend if you like these tales. If you want to read more of Kipling's work for adults, I'd recommend either "The Man Who Would be King" or the short story collection "Plain Tales from the Hills," both of which should be available for free online.

As to formatting of this kindle edition: there are blocks of Kipling's poetry in between the stories, some of which was difficult to read as the formatting had not carried over well to this Kindle edition. Not a critical issue, but Kipling's poetry is excellent and the formatting errors were annoying.

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

You will be sold on Kipling. And you may never settle for the movie afterwards; Jungle Book lives and breaths on its own.