Review by C.J. Bunce
“and the moon shone into the mouth of the cave where they all lived.”
Rudyard Kipling’s Mowgli, Bagheera, Baloo, and Shere Khan are names known world-wide for generations. Maybe you know them from movie adaptations both live-action and animated. But have you read the original 1894 collection of short stories called The Jungle Book? It’s a truly timeless look into stories for children from 132 years ago but also a glimpse at a world at the time of the Nobel Prize winning author. If you haven’t delved into the original, there’s no better version to try than MinaLima’s hardcover library edition complete with interactive features, including four-color illustrations, brightly designed presentations of the book’s many songs, a map of the lost Indian city where Mowgli is taken by the monkeys, a spinning dial of the elephant dance, and a map of Kotick the seal’s route to find a new home.
MinaLima is the design studio combining the imaginations of two artists that gained notoriety for creating the entire ten-year run of graphic art and graphic props for the Harry Potter film series (discussed in the books The Archive of Magic, The Art of Harry Potter, and The Art of Harry Potter pocket edition). British design artist Miraphora Mina and Brazilian design artist Eduardo Lima also provided imagery for The Golden Compass, Sweeney Todd, and The Imitation Game. As with MinaLima’s illustrated edition of eight other classics (see links to our borg reviews below), MinaLima again offers up their artistry and design to make a new definitive version of a classic–a storybook that could be a new favorite for the next generation of readers, now available here at Amazon.
My initial reaction to the first three stories of the book is a reminder of how the 1967 Disney adaptation was so well done. Unlikely many of the Disney film classics, the screenplay captures some of the nuance Kipling put into his very layered, cleanly-woven development of characters and the jungle they live in. Bagheera the black panther is incredibly savvy and protective. The bear Baloo is a wise teacher, well-versed in surviving the jungle, understanding its inhabitants and their complex languages. Akela protects lead character Mowgli the man-cub and his wolf siblings, along with Raksha, his adoptive wolf mother.
My next reaction was how familiar the characters are from my days in Cub Scouts as a kid. So much of the Cub Scout manual is adapted from the characters and world of these stories.
Any young person reading these stories for the first time is dropped straight into an Imperial look at thought processes of an Englander in the age of Imperial England. One can see the thoughts of a man who saw himself as an orphan–he and his sister were sent to boarding school, as was done for British nationals living abroad at the time. Kipling interjected racism, bullyism, military for youths, survival by killing, and other hard concepts into his accessible, often cute lead characters.
The next tales are standalone. “The White Seal” introduces the vicious constant fighting that happens between… seals… all as a seal tries to find a place on the planet where he will not be harmed by the actions of men. In the fifth story readers meet Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, a mongoose who is rescued by a family of humans. First thought dead, he is brought inside and nurtured. He rises to become a hero for the family. This was given a 30-minute animated film adaptation in the 1960s by Chuck Jones, narrated by Orson Welles. Less familiar and accessible by modern young readers will be the final two tails, “Toomai of The Elephants” and “Her Majesty’s Servants.” The former reads like an account of slaves under British rule, with the slaves as elephants taken from the wild and forced into servitude. The latter reads similarly, only as if camels are army recruits all sharing their accounts and trials among each other as you’d find in a contemporary story of human soldiers. Historically it’s an interesting set of tales, but more likely adults will want to introduce modern audiences to the first stories of the book primarily, possibly as read-alouds.
As found in the other books in the series, MinaLima’s creative and colorful inserts will set the stage and pull readers into the narrative.
A beautiful edition of Kiping’s classic tales, from MinaLima and Harper Design, this is another keepsake storybook perfect for young to middle grade girls and boys and adult readers. Order The Jungle Book now here at Amazon. And don’t miss the other books in the MinaLima library reviewed here at borg: The Secret Garden here, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz here, The Little Mermaid and Other Fairy Tales here, Snow White and Other Grimms Fairy Tales here, plus Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Beauty and the Beast, and Pinocchio. We also reviewed MinaLima’s similar edition of Frankenstein here at borg. You won’t want to miss it. What’s next for MinaLima? You can order their illustrated edition of The Little Prince now here at Amazon, and Treasure Island here, coming from Harper Books in September.
