Rikki-Tikki-Tavi - Softcover

Kipling, Rudyard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1484123689 ISBN 13: 9781484123683

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013

Synopsis

This is the story of a boy and his weasel, a bird and a snake, India and the British Empire. Rudyard Kipling's dramatic tale, here excerpted from the greater volume of The Jungle Book, is the story of the loyal mongoose, Rikk-Tikki-Tavi, and the lengths to which he must go to protect his adoptive human family.

Young readers can once again be captivated by the tale of a mongoose who is taken in by a family of British colonials living in India. Although a few Victorianisms in the text will need to be explained to young readers, the story has held up remarkably well over a century's time. Rikki's fight to defend his family from the menacing cobras Nag and Nagaina remains as suspenseful and emotive as ever. The creatures of the Indian garden come truly alive in Kipling's expert prose--the birds sing out messages of joy and warning; the cobra rears and spreads his sinister hood; the brave mongoose leaps and springs, victorious at last.

(cover image courtesy of Gary Scott)

About this title

Review:

In this glorious picture book, Pinkney's accessible retelling and dramatic watercolors plunge readers into the lush garden Rikki rules and the life of the family he comes to guard. The large pictures (often spreading across much of a facing page) can barely contain the mongoose's energy as his lithe body twists and turns, evading and attacking the cobras and the brown snake, curling in young Teddy's arms, and basking in the family's adulation. Pinkney's humans are not idealized, and Rikki, while eminently pettable, is not anthropomorphized. The subdued natural colors of the animals contrast with the garden's riot. The splash of a yellow squash blossom; Teddy's crimson shirt; a scarlet hibiscus, or the burnished head of Darzee, the tailor bird, add grace notes to the shimmering pages. This great story has been given the loving treatment it deserves.
" School Library Journal

"Pinkney applies his considerable talents to the smooth retelling and lush illustration of one of Kipling's best-loved animal tales.... A captivating work." "Publishers Weekly, " 6/2/97

About the Author:

Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay (now known as Mumbai), India, but returned with his parents to England at the age of five. Among Kipling's best-known works are The Jungle Book, Just So Stories, and the poems "Mandalay" and "Gunga Din." Kipling was the first English-language writer to receive the Nobel Prize for literature (1907) and was among the youngest to have received the award.

About this edition

• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1484123689
• ISBN 13: 9781484123683
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 32