Kim
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Kim, aka Kimball O'Hara, is the orphan son of a British soldier and a half-caste opium addict in India. While running free through the streets of Lahore as a child he befriends a British secret service agent. Later, attaching himself to a Tibetan Lama on a quest to be freed from the Wheel of Life, Kim becomes the Lama's disciple, but is also used by the British to carry messages to the British commander in Umballa. Kim's trip with the Lama along the Grand Trunk Road is only the first great adventure in the novel...
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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.
