
I’ve never read The Jungle Book before (although I used to love the Disney film) so I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. I knew about Kipling’s views on empire and so forth, but this was quite a charming book of fables, using the stories to provide morals. Less than half of it is taken up by Mowgli’s adventures with the rest being unrelated short stories, including the mongoose Rikki-Tikki-Tavi’s fight against the snakes and the white seal Kotick’s search for a safe haven for seals, where humans won’t hunt them.