Publisher Description
The son of an Irish soldier, Kim doesn’t really fit in with the other residents of his native Lahore or among India's British transplants. The 13-year-old orphan struggles to find an identity for himself, while living hand-to-mouth in the streets. When he's befriended by a Tibetan monk, Kim becomes the elderly lama's disciple and joins the quest to locate the sacred River of the Arrow.
But Kim's adventures are only just beginning. Along the way, he's recruited to carry a secret message for British Intelligence, becoming an agent in "the Great Game" — the 19th-century contest between Russia and the British Empire for control over Central Asia. Kim's torn between the excitement of spying and the freedom of life on the road, and he faces a staggering challenge when his two worlds collide. Nobel Prize-winner Rudyard Kipling's vivid portrait of India during the 1890s recaptures the region's diversity of peoples and cultures in a tale that brims with intrigue and treachery.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Kipling's inspirational poem the one that begins, "If you can keep your head when all about you/ Are losing theirs" describes how to preserve one's honor by the principled avoidance of political and moral pitfalls. Italian artist Manna imagines the "you" of the poem as a boy journeying through a series of watercolor landscapes: fields under billowing clouds, misty nights, craggy mountaintops. To accompany the poem's first line, Manna paints the boy watching from a great green meadow as storm clouds approach; he stands and watches with a cool head, rather than running in fear. For "If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew/ To serve your turn long after they are gone," Manna shows the boy climbing a rocky pitch, the peaks of other mountains poking through the clouds below. Flying kites represent temptation, and dull-eyed marionettes represent allies who can't be trusted ("If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken/ Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools"). Though young readers may not fathom the poem's complexities, the grandeur of Manna's scenes conveys the loftiness of Kipling's sentiments. Ages 6 8.
