- Home
- juvenile fiction
- The Jungle Book (Royal Collector's Edition) (Case Laminate Hardcover with Jacket)
The Jungle Book (Royal Collector's Edition) (Case Laminate Hardcover with Jacket)
Published by: Engage Books
The tales in The Jungle Book are fables, using animals in an anthropomorphic manner to give moral lessons. The verses of "The Law of the Jungle," for example, lay down rules for the safety of individuals, families, and communities. Stories include the tale of "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi", the tale of a heroic mongoose, and "Toomai of the Elephants", the tale of a young elephant-handler. The best-known fables are the three stories revolving around the adventures of Mowgli, an abandoned 'man-cub' who is raised by wolves in the Indian jungle.
The Jungle Book came to be used as a motivational book by the Cub Scouts, a junior element of the Scouting movement. This use of the book's universe was approved by Kipling at the request of Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Scouting movement, who had originally asked for the author's permission for the use of the Memory Game from Kim in his scheme to develop the morale and fitness of working-class youths in cities. Akela, the head wolf in The Jungle Book, has become a senior figure in the movement, the name being traditionally adopted by the leader of each Cub Scout pack.
This case laminate collector's edition includes a Victorian inspired dust-jacket.
Joseph Rudyard Kipling (30 December 1865 - 18 January 1936) was an English journalist, short-story writer, poet, and novelist. Kipling's works of fiction include The Jungle Book (1894), Kim (1901), and many short stories, including "The Man Who Would Be King" (1888). He is regarded as a major innovator in the art of the short story; his children's books are classics of children's literature; and one critic described his work as exhibiting "a versatile and luminous narrative gift." Kipling was one of the most popular writers in the United Kingdom, in both prose and verse, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Henry James said: "Kipling strikes me personally as the most complete man of genius, as distinct from fine intelligence, that I have ever known." In 1907, at the age of 42, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, making him the first English-language writer to receive the prize, and its youngest recipient to date. He was also sounded out for the British Poet Laureateship and on several occasions for a knighthood, both of which he declined. Kipling's subsequent reputation has changed according to the political and social climate of the age and the resulting contrasting views about him continued for much of the 20th century. George Orwell called him a "prophet of British imperialism." Literary critic Douglas Kerr wrote: "Kipling is still an author who can inspire passionate disagreement and his place in literary and cultural history is far from settled. But as the age of the European empires recedes, he is recognised as an incomparable, if controversial, interpreter of how empire was experienced. That, and an increasing recognition of his extraordinary narrative gifts, make him a force to be reckoned with."
Related Books
