The Jungle Book
by Rudyard Kipling · first published 1893
44% recommend44% neutral11% critical
Why HN recommends it
Collection of animal stories set in the Indian jungle, featuring Mowgli and his animal companions. It is a classic children's read, well suited to reading aloud, and a step toward adult classics.
Common criticism: Commenters note its colonial and racist overtones, dated by modern standards.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
The adventures of Mowgli, a man-child raised by wolves in the jungle, have captured the imaginations not just of children, but of all readers, for generations.
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What Hacker News says
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…not already—and especially classics, they tend to have really nice prose that you want to run your eyes over several times just for the sensation, anyway) or classics of children's literature (e.g. The Jungle Book). Might help. Lots of childrens' books are just plain bad.
on “The Lost Pleasure of Reading Aloud” ↗White Fang by Jack London is excellent. Also the original Jungle Book stories by Rudyard Kipling are beautiful as well, if a little colonial in places. My favourite when I was little was Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. Both are in the public domain so can be downloaded for free from…
on “Ship's cat” ↗…best to do for your family, but for ours (4,8,11yo, but we've done this since the first was ~3): * Every night, read them out loud classic books slightly over recommended reading age. We started with Jungle Book, Riki Tiki Tavi, other Kipling, Bears on Hemlock Mountain, etc. These days we just finished Lord of the Rings and are doing Silmarillion. Jules Verne is another favorite. * Audio books. We use Audible…
on “Ask HN: Teaching kids how to think?” ↗…frighten every head of game within ten miles, and I--I have to kill for two, these days." [0] Why anyone would deprive someone the thrill of reading short stories like "How the Camel Got His Hump" [1] or "Jungle Book" is beyond me. Kipling fell out of favour because of the "Imperialist" overtones of his writing, a product of the British Empire times he lived in. I can think of another reason: Kipling also wrote what…
on “Slow, free range, idle parents can increase IQ and happiness” ↗I made this single page app (responsive) of this awesome book by Rudyard Kipling -- The Jungle Book. It's a great read for children. The repo is available on Github[1]--under MIT license--for anyone to fork and republish with an alternative take/ newer illustrations. Hope you like it! :-) [1] https://github.com/marvindanig/the-jungle-book
on “Show HN: The Jungle Book” ↗…Brave New World (Huxley) Farenheit 451 (Heinlein) Never Cry Wolf (Mowatt) A Whale for the Killing (Mowatt) The Machine Stops (Forster) Heart of Darkness (Conrad) Starship Troopers (Heinlein) The Jungle Book (Kipling) Lost in the Barrens (Mowatt) The Republic (Plato) Rendezvous with Rama (Clarke) Ringworld (Niven) The Stainless Steel Rat (Harrison) The Hobbit (Tolkien) Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and…
on “Ask HN: What book had a big impact on you as a child or teenager?” ↗…"literature"): - Patrick O'Brian - Arthur Conan Doyle - Dorothy Dunnet I'd recommend Rudyard Kipling's short stories, but they're hit and miss, and sometimes out of step with modern mores. Maybe stick with the Jungle Book, and Just So Stories, and if you like those make sure you read Without Benefit of Clergy, They (short stories), and Kim (a masterpiece of a novel). Once you've got through those, Hemingway is approachable,…
on “Maybe the Default Settings Are Too High” ↗…understand PTSD. Read a lot of Asimov, robot series, foundation and short stories starting with The Last Question. Jules Verne Mark Twain, various stories but particularly the Diary of Adam & Eve The Jungle Book by Kipling Lost Horizon Robinson Crusoe Dune Series Enders Game and sequels. The Odyssey The Count of Monte Cristo Seventh Son by Orson Scott Card because it helped me understand that a cultures…
on “Ask HN: Life Changing Books?” ↗…largely, an endorsement of traditional norms of masculinity, and the same sort of far-right conservatism is the source of the racist prejudices in The White Man's Burden--and in his other famous work, The Jungle Book. In fact, the connection between the poem "If" and colonialism is even more direct: > To take one example, Rudyard Kipling’s poem ‘If…’ (1895), which acts as a guide to manhood for his son, takes inspiration…
on “If – A Poem by Rudyard Kipling” ↗…better for your kids is controversial for "helicopter parents". As for Kipling, I would assume the reference I took (from another critic) was referring to either Kipling's more adult books or reading the Jungle Book to very young kids. As a parent of a 2-year-old who is tired of reading and re-reading most of the very simple books in the young kids' section of the library (I agree with gvb regarding many modern storybooks),…
on “Slow, free range, idle parents can increase IQ and happiness” ↗…purely stylistic in order to modernize the story. In fact, most of Walt Disney’s films were books adapted and changed and “modernized” without the consent of the original author. Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book is disgustingly racist and imperialist. Disney modernized the story significantly by removing many of those themes (although adding a few “modern” racist tropes of their own). No one calls those adaptations…
on “The rewriting of Roald Dahl is an act of cultural vandalism” ↗…that they've made a vast amount of their fortune by adapting classic public domain works like Snowwhite, Cinderella, Pinocchio, Beauty and the Beast, Alice in Wonderland, Little Mermaid, Aladdin and The Jungle Book, the latter was released one year after Kipling's copyright had expired.
on “What Could Have Entered the Public Domain on January 1, 2014” ↗Funny to see this adjacent to the Kipling article on HN. In Kipling's Jungle Book (fiction), wolves hate monkeys, considering them self-important creatures who never follow throilugh on their grand plans.
on “Monkeys' cosy alliance with wolves” ↗I recently finished my Engineering degree in Canada, and while I always knew about the iron ring I had no idea the ceremony itself was authored by Rudyard Kipling (The Jungle Book).
on “Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer” ↗Just add a few more that are popular - Ralph Waldo Emerson - Henry David Thoreau - Rudyard Kipling (jungle book) - Anna Sewell (black beauty) - Walt Whitman (leaves of grass) - Edgar Allan Poe - Alexander Dumas (Count of Monte Cristo, musketeers) - Tocqueville (democracy in America)
on “Reflections as the Internet Archive turns 25” ↗