Unaware of the connection, I read this book right before reading Gaiman's The Graveyard Book. Gaiman states in the acknowledgments that he wrote his book in part as an homage to Kipling's book.

This was my second time reading this with my children, but the first with this edition and I really enjoyed the illustrations of this book, they were beautiful, but didn't dwarf the text. The book gets better with the second retelling.

I only gave it a 3 because it's not really the type of writing I enjoy reading. But it was quite interesting and I was mostly drawn to Mowgli's stories. The rest seemed random to me, but still fun and interesting to read.

I guess tonight is the night of adding a bunch of childhood favorite classics to my Goodreads. When I should be asleep. Ah well, such is life.

I didn't like this one very much... but the new Disney live-action movie is cool. Though quite different. (That may be why I liked it.)

A classic.

There are a lot of differences between the book and the movie. One thing that I didn’t catch, even though it may be in the movie, is that the reason why the animals in the jungle do not want Mowgli to be there is because he is man. They cannot hold his gaze; therefore, they are not his equal and they do not like that. I don’t remember the “holding the gaze” part and I think that is completely true. With my cats and dog, I can hold their gaze longer than they can hold mine.

When Mowgli is carried off by the Bandar-Log, the monkey tribe hated by the rest of the jungle because of their vanity and stupidity, it wasn’t just Bagheera and Baloo who went after him, but the monkey-eating snake Kaa!

Hathi the Elephant tells a story about why the tiger is striped at a meeting of the waterhole (during the drought year) and it sounds like something straight out of a Grimm Brother’s book to me. I love those kinds of stories.

There isn’t a big fight scene with Mowgli and Shere Kan like in the movie. Mowgli is actually extremely clever with how he overcomes the tiger and solves more than one problem with the same stone.

Over all, I thought this was an interesting read. Not every story is about Mowgli, like one about a seal trying to find a place without man, one about a mongoose defending his family against venomous snakes, a man who watches the elephants dance, and a man with a variety of animals discussing military and fears; but, those about Mowgli are the most known and therefore are the ones I thought I would put in this review.

The writing is a little harder to follow, but it isn’t impossible. It was written a long time ago, I think it was 1894, and language evolves as time does. I think it was a good one-time read for me.

I almost gave this three stars, but raised it to four because I remember the "White Seal" story.

I did not have any problem reading this, except that the last story did not keep my attention. The three stories involving Mowgli were great, the White Seal story was a mixture of emotions for me, and I loved the Rikki-Tikki-Tavi and Toomai stories. Most of the animals were very likeable characters right away, and I appreciate that Kipling portrays them as more civilized and ethical than humans. I probably wouldn't read it again, but I'm glad I've read it once, and I'm optimistic for the sequel.

I listened to the audiobook version of this, and might not have been paying 100% attention, as I kept losing track of what was happening. Despite this, the performances were terrific--it was like listening to a play, as they had sound effects and a score and everything. It's the kind of book I can imagine would be great to listen to with an elementary school-aged children: whimsical and imaginative. I can't totally explain why I didn't get sucked into the story.

3.5/4 ⭐

I'm glad that this was a book club choice. I had only been introduced to the stories via Disney and that's just not good enough to understand this writing from the period. It does expose Kipling's devotion to colonialism which is a bit hard to take in the modern world. There are also some pretty violent scenes that I wanted to skip, but since I was listening, I couldn't figure out how to do that before the scene was over.