You know you've been in grad school when...you can't read a children's classic without analyzing its Orientalist perspective. To read this book then, you have to do that thing where you forget there's been advances in social perspectives and take Kipling as a product of his time—a British colonialist.

Now that we've gotten that over with, I was surprisingly spellbound by these tales of Mowgli and his jungle friends. Kipling had me in a thrall, and I wanted to believe this fantasy of being raised by wolves and having a giant black panther as my BFF. There was a darkness shifting underneath that kept me believing, and was much better than the sanitized Disney version. At times The Law of the Jungle gave me shivers. Kipling's pacing and language matches the story. Mowgli's ego eventually irritated me, but there's more! The tale of Rikki Tikki Tavi is simply an ole' fashioned good guy v. bad guy showdown at high noon (only with a giant Cobra) and it made me wish I had a mongoose protecting me, instead of my lazy, fat cats.

I wound up reading these books because I was bored at my parents. It was either this or The Origins of Swarovski Crystal. I think I made the right choice.