The Jungle Book is a wonderful collection of stories by world famous English author Rudyard Kipling. The original publications contain illustrations, some by the author's father, John Lockwood Kipling. The tales in the book are fables, using animals in an anthropomorphic manner to give moral lessons. The best-known of them are the three stories revolving around the adventures of Mowgli, an abandoned "man cub" who is raised by wolves in the Indian jungle. The most famous of the other four stories are probably Rikk i- Tikki - Tavi, the story of a heroic mongoose, and Toomai of the Elephants, the tale of a young elephant-handler. As with much of Kipling's work, each of the stories is followed by a piece of verse. There is poignant evidence - a recent discovery of a hand written note in a rare first editiion of the book by the author to his young daughter that the collection of stories was written for his daughter Josephine, who died in 1899 at six years of age by pneumonia...
