The Jungle Book & Second Jungle Book (Complete‪)‬

The Jungle Book (1894) is a collection of stories written by
Rudyard Kipling. The stories were first published in magazines in 1893–4. The
original publications contained illustrations, some by Rudyard's father, John
Lockwood Kipling. Kipling was born in India and spent the first six years of his
childhood there. After about ten years in England, he went back to India and
worked there for about six-and-half years. These stories were written when
Kipling lived in Vermont.

The tales in the book (and also those in The Second Jungle Book which
followed in 1895, and which includes five further stories about Mowgli) are
fables, using animals in an anthropomorphic manner to give moral lessons. The
verses of The Law of the Jungle, for example, lay down rules for the
safety of individuals, families and communities. Kipling put in them nearly
everything he knew or "heard or dreamed about the Indian jungle." Other readers
have interpreted the work as allegories of the politics and society of the time.
The best-known of them are the three stories revolving around the adventures of
an abandoned 'man cub' Mowgli who is raised by wolves in the Indian jungle. The
most famous of the other stories are probably "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi", the story of a
heroic mongoose, and "Toomai of the Elephants", the tale of a young
elephant-handler. Kotick, The White Seal seeking for his people a haven where
they would be safe from hunters, has been considered a metaphor for Zionism,
then in its beginning.

— Excerpted from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.