The Jungle Book door Rudyard Kipling

Title: The Jungle Book (Mowgli's brothers 1/ Kaa's hunting 2/ Tiger!Tiger! 3/ The white seal 4/ Rikki-Tikki-Tavi 5/ Toomai of the elephants 6/ Her majesty's servants 7)
Writer: Rudyard Kipling; Born in India 1865 and was educated in England. When he was seventeen he returned to India and there he worked on various journals and newspapers. After he was married and settled in the USA in 1892, he returned to England 5 years later and lived in East Sussex. In 1907 Kipling won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Setting:

1,2,3: The jungle near the Seeonee Hills (India)/ Cold Lairs, the monkey city/ Man Pack's village
4: Novastoshnah in the Bering Sea
5: the big bungalow in Segowlee cantonment
6: the Garo Hills (India)
7: Rawalpindi (India)

Theme:

1,2,3: The live of Mowgli and his friends
4: The quest of Kotick for an island unreachable for men
5: Rikki-Tikki-Tavi's fight against Nag and Nagaina
6: Toomai who lives to see the dance of the elephants
7: The way animals act in the war

Motivation: This story was written by Kipling to let people show that the way animals live is not so very different from the way humans live

Characters:

1,2,3: -Mowgli => boy raised by wolves, very smart, impulsive, loves Baloo/ Bagheera., supports Akela
-Baloo => bear, Mowgli's teacher, friend of Bagheera, impatient
-Bagheera => black panther, good in fighting, very strict
-Kaa => rock python, feared by the Bandar-Log
-Tabaqui => jackal, friend of Shere Khan
-Akela => ('top')wolf, wise
-Grey Brother => wolf, 'brother' of Mowgli
-Shere Khan => Tiger, not very smart, lame
-Buldeo => Man from the village who has a gun and tells tales
-Messua => Mowgli's mother
4: -Kotick => white seal, very proud and a 'pusher', best fighter of the seals
-Limmershin => the one who told Kipling this story
-Sea Catch => Kotick's father, proud of his son
-Matkah => Kotick's mother, concerned about Kotick, gentle
-Sea Vitch => walrus, ugly, no manners, tells Kotick that probably the Sea Cow would know if such a place excists
5: -Rikki-Tikki-Tavi => mongoose, great fighter, curious, fast irritated
-Nag/ Nagaina => black cobra, mean
-Chuchundra => musk-rat, very scared
-Darzee and his wife => tailor-birds, hate Nag(aina)
-Teddy, his mother and father => the people who live in the bungalow
6: -Toomai => son of big Toomai, tracker, immense respect for Petersen Sahib, adventurous
-Big Toomai => tracker, hates to even think about another profession, loyal
-Kala Nag => elephant in service of the Indian Government
-Petersen Sahib => the boss of the whole 'catchgroup', white guy
-Machua Appa => the head-tracker
7: -The 'I' => tells the reader what he heard the animals say
-Billy => mule, part of the screw-gun battery, takes place where nobody can hit him, but he can hit him
-recruit => mule
-troop-horse => horse, doesn't trust anyone but Dick Cunliffe; his rider, charges the enemy with knives
-gun-bullocks => twins (?), afraid of white men, because they eat beef, graze grass while others fight
-Two Tails => elephant, to scared to fight
-camel => fighting for him is sitting in a big square
-Vixen => The 'I' s dog

Outline:

1: This part of the story tells about Mowgli being raised by Mother and Father Wolf. A special event therefore is the acceptance of him by the whole Wolf Pack on the Council Rock. Later on he is banned from the jungle by the majority of the pack, because he is a man's cub.
2: This part of the story happens before Mowgli is banned from the Seeonee Wolf-Pack or revenged him on Shere Khan (see part three). Mowgli is kidnapped by the Bandar-Log (grey monkeys) who want him to learn them al there is to learn. But Baloo and Bagheera follow him to Cold Lairs and they have asked the help from Kaa and free him. After Mowgli's punishment (six blows b Bagheera) everything is forgotten.
3: After being banned, Mowgli goes to his former village and is excepted by the villagers. After a while he must herd the buffaloes. And all this time Grey Brother keeps him informed about where Sher Khan is. When Shere Khan comes, Mowgli sets up a trap with a ravine and a buffalo-stampede and so defeats him.
4: Kotick is born and after a year or so he goes back to Novastoshna (Lukannon Beach) and witnesses a horde of holluschickie being slaughtered by men. And that's why he spends the next five seasons to find his 'Paradise'. When he finds it he reports this to the other seals, but when they don't believe him he fights everyone who doesn't believe him; and wins. Afterwards more and more seals go to his island.
5: One day Rikki-Tikki-Tavi comes across the bungalow. He becomes the 'family-pet' after saving the family from being killed by the cobra's Nag and Nagaina, by killing both of them.
6: After he went into a Keddah (that's the place where the wild elephants are trapped) Little Toomai talked to Petersen Sahib and he gives him permission to go in a Keddah only then when he has seen the elephants dance (which normally means never). But one night Kala Nag breaks lose and Toomai goes with him on his back to the place where the elephants danced in front of his eyes. The next evening there is a feast in honor of Toomai, because he saw this.
7: After there were a few animals that broke lose and run over the tent of the 'I', he made an improvised tent and heard a few camp-animals talk about how they thought was the way to fight (he could follow beast-language). The next morning there was a parade in honor of the Viceroy an the Amir and there was also a song.

Appreciation: I found this book rather disappointing, because I suspected it was the same as the video (and then I mean: one story, with a little line in it). The book itself was rather easy to read, because the style and language were easy to follow. But the subjects weren't very interesting and that made the book boring. This effect was also reached by the fact that the book excists out of different, lose stories. On the other side I'll 'praise' Kipling, because probably children would love his stories and that would say something about his way of writing and of his way of placing himself in children's minds.
If I were to pick the best story out of this book, then I probably would doubt between the Mowgli-part and the White Seal. The first story was funny and original to read and for the second story goes the same. The rest is out of the question, because it's too much of the same.
This book is definitely not one I'm going to advise to others, because I find it too childish and also boring (even whish I had read Bram Stoker's Dracula; but I didn't have the time/ didn't feel like it).