The Jungle Book (Everyman's Library CHILDREN'S CLASSICS) - Hardcover

Kipling, Rudyard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1857159322 ISBN 13: 9781857159325

Publisher: Childrens Classics, 1994

Synopsis

Among the best loved of all classics for children are the tales of Mowgli, the boy who learned the law of the jungle as he grew up among a pack of wolves in India's Seeonee Hills. First published in 1894, the book imagines a child living and flourishing in a community of animals - an idea that perhaps had its origin in Kipling's unhappy childhood. 'His stories are not animal stories in the realistic sense; they are wonderful, beautiful fairy tales, ' wrote Ernest Thompson Seton, the great Canadian naturalist. Kurt Wiese's illustrations, commissoned by the American firm of Doubleday in 1932, have never appeared in Britain before. An artist with a particular interest in animals and an amazing visual memory, he remembered all he had observed on his travels in the Far East during the early 1900s, first as a salesman in China and then as a prisoner-of-war of the Japanese.

About this title

Review:

"The Jungle Book was one of those rare books that I felt I was actually living as I read it" (Michael Morpurgo)

"The original stories of The Jungle Book surpass all rollicking Disneyfied expectations. On one level, the Mancub's education is pure entertainment; on another, the jungle is symbolic of Kipling's philosophy of life, a moral playground in which the young learn to swing on the vines of life" (The Times)

"The incantatory text of Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Books still rewards reading aloud" (Sunday Times)

"Around a century ago, Rudyard Kipling laid the foundations of modern children's literature with works such as The Jungle Book, Just So Stories and Puck of Pook's Hill. Far from the fusty Victorian conventions of the time, they were wild, magnificent stories that felt as though they'd always existed, stories people might have told each other in the caves" (Daily Telegraph)

"So what makes these different to any other set of classics? In a moment of inspiration Random House had the bright idea of actually asking Key stage 2 children what extra ingredients they could add to make children want to read. And does it work? Well, put it this way...my 13-year-old daughter announced that she had to read a book over the summer holiday and, without any prompting, spotted The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas...and proceeded to read it! Now, if you knew my 13-year-old daughter, you would realise that this is quite remarkable. She reads texts, blogs and tags by the thousand - but this is the first book she has read since going to high school, so all hail Vintage Classics!" (National Association for the Teaching of English)

Book Description:

Learn the ways of the jungle with little Mowgli the man-cub. Swing from the trees, befriend the animals, face your primal fears

About this edition

• Publisher: Childrens Classics
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 1857159322
• ISBN 13: 9781857159325
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 272