Sometimes the tart nature of motivational stories can be more easily received and internalized if the message is cloaked in the sweetness of animals, anthropomorphic characters, who, sentient and capable, experience the vagaries of the world’s ways and then draw and express some moral from the experience. Rudyard Kipling, the Englishman who keenly felt the burden of his privilege, wrote The Jungle Book, a series of short stories that were first published in several magazines in 1893 and 1894. There is some very recent evidence (2010) found in a poignant handwritten note, discovered in a rare first edition of the book, that Kipling wrote these beautiful and wholly entertaining stories for his daughter, Josephine, who died at the age of six in 1899. Published in book form in 1894, the stories that comprise The Jungle Book enjoy great popularity due to Disney’s 1967 animated film version that was followed by a second Disney adaptation in 2003. Several other film and stage adaptations have also contributed to the work’s popularity. The stories contain nearly everything Kipling knew and had learned about the Indian Jungle during his childhood in India. The best known of the stories are the three that concern the man-cub “Mowglii,” who is raised by wolves. The stories and their accompanying verses offer helpful safety tips for persons, families and communities. Many have looked deeper into these stories, and, as with Orwell, have interpreted the work as being a sophisticated commentary on the politics and society of the time. (Summary by Michael Hogan)

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