As a child, I remember watching The Jungle Book as a movie. Not the Disney cartoon version (although I remember watching that), but the film version. I remember watching it over and over again and really loving it. So, when I saw The Jungle Book, the book, I was really excited to be able to buy it and read it.What I didn't realise is that it isn't just the story of Mowgli the man cub but is actually a collection of other stories in which all the main characters are animals (and Toomai, the elephant boy). This was actually a nice surprise. The majority of The Jungle Book deals with Mowgli's story and the rest of the book deals with shorter stories involving other characters.
The story of Mowgli was really good in writing. It was a different story to the one in the movie, there is no girl that Mowgli likes, and no treasure that Buldeo and his cronies go looking for. The 'true' story of Mowgli focuses on his being accepted into the wolf pack, then expelled from it. He then enters the man pack and is eventually expelled and welcomed back into the Jungle after having killed his enemy, Shir Kan, the tiger. It's a lovely fable and I'm glad I revisited the original story as an adult.
The other stories varied; there was one about a white seal who finds someone safe for his fellow seals to live away from the threat of man, one about Toomai the elephant boy who sees what no man has seen before, one about a pet mongoose who saves him human family from the evil cobras and another about animals being used during the war. I especially liked The White Seal, I thought it was really sweet that he spent so long focussed solely on protecting his fellow seals, and for little thanks.
I definitely recommend this as a great and fun read.
Star Rating
5 / 8
Good and worth reading if you have the opportunity, but there's no need to prioritise it.
Originally posted 3 December 2009 Page Turners
No comments