Rudyard Kipling is praised as a brilliant literary stylist whose rich, rhythmic prose and creative use of language have delighted generations of readers around the globe. He is best known to modern audiences for his masterful, widely read stories for children, many of which are collected in the two Jungle Books and in Just So Stories for Little Children. In the most popular of the Jungle Book tales, Kipling relates the experiences of Mowgli, a boy abandoned by his parents and raised by wolves to become master of the jungle. Although bearing similarities to other anthropomorphic fiction, Kipling's work was original in its representation of a man living among animals, a conception which spawned numerous derivative tales, among the most popular of which were Edgar Rice Burroughs's Tarzan stories. In addition, Kipling portrayed his animal characters with simplicity, humor, and dignity. He avoided much of the patronizing tone...