"This is a very good adaptation of Kipling's classic work. Tayal . . . is an excellent choice for this book, where his cartoony stylings handle the animals and the animalistic side of Mowgli very well. . . . [Johnson's] abridgement is smoothly successful. -- ICv2 (Four Stars)

Rudyard Kipling was born on 30th December 1865 in Bombay, India, to Alice and John Lockwood Kipling. When Kipling was six, he and his three-year-old sister went without their parents to live in Portsmouth, England, for six years, after which they moved back to India. Throughout his life Kipling travelled to many countries, including South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, America, and Japan. Kipling started his career in 1882 as assistant editor of the "Civil & Military Gazette" in Lahore, Pakistan. Besides writing articles, he was wrote many short stories for the newspaper. He married Carrie Balestier in London on in January of 1982. Their first child, Josephine, was born later that year. Kipling is regarded as one of the greatest British writers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Among his works are such classic novels as "Captains Courageous" and "Kim"; the short stories that make up "The Jungle Book" and "The Second Jungle Book" (including the Mowgli stories), "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi," and "The White Seal," and poems such as Mandalay and Gunga Din. He was the first English language recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907. Rudyard Kipling died on 18th January 1936 of a perforated duodenal ulcer. His ashes are buried in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.