by Rudyard Kipling
A beautifully written novel on the serene and unarguable wise order of nature.
Reviewed by: Jennifer Muzinic
About Jennifer Muzinic
You can't get away with watching that bumbling, singing, dancing, goof-ball, crime against literature, CARTOON of this novel and call yourself "up to speed". Anyone who tries to slip by without reading this novel should be forced to walk around a theme park in one of those god-awful costumes and be kicked in the shins by frightened children until they wise up.
Actually, Rudyard Kipling's "The Jungle Book" is a beautifully written, respectful novel about the serene and unarguably wise order of nature--the good, the bad, and everything in between.
If the "beasts" could talk to us, unworthy humans that we are, why do we seem so sure that they wouldn't have anything of value to say? Through his story of a whole community of animals' adoption of one young boy (yes, Mowgli, raised by wolves), Kipling points out that animals do, indeed, have a wisdom to depart. Respect for each other, for the land, acceptance of fate, the undeniable importance of freedom--think we could learn anything from that?
As a human, Mowgli faces a lot of resistance to his becoming a part of the jungle community, but when you've been raised by the wise, you tend to reflect your teachings.
The novel, divided into songs and lessons (like "How Fear Came" or "Mowgli's Song Against People"), resembles the ageless, oral passage of wisdom that has become humanity's legends.
Each character is strong, so real you can visualize and relate--care about, interact with. There are individuals and personalities--each animal doesn't represent a species as much as a different "law" in the natural order.
The beautiful names, the meaning behind the words, help put you into a trance, descriptive passages and stories-within-stories mesmerize, kind of like this (but not really at all)
--you're sitting cross-legged in front of a campfire, listening to the stories of elders, eyes half-open, surrounding mist, flickerings of the logs entwined with the visions of another meeting, moonlight reflecting off the cliffs, at council, amongst the wolves...
I'm telling you, you've got to read this--If you have kids, it's the perfect book to read aloud, chapter by chapter, each bedtime and rainy day until you regretfully come to the end. (and have to start over?) Or be stingy and read it yourself--you won't be disappointed. But whatever you do, quit watching cartoons and READ, for crying out loud!
Click here to buy this book, or read more about it at Amazon.com: The Jungle Book
Copyright © by Jennifer Muzinic, 2002
Reviewed by Jennifer Muzinic:
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-- White Oleander - by Janet Fitch
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-- The Jungle Book - by Rudyard Kipling
-- Many Lives, Many Masters
- by Brian L. Weiss, M.D.
-- Jitterbug Perfume - by Tom Robbins
-- The Sun Also Rises - by Ernest Hemingway
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