Recommendations from our site
“Mowgli has great adventures: we have the Bandar-log, and Kaa the snake who at one point almost swallows up Mowgli’s later protector, Bagheera the panther. But there is nobody else…there is that terrible moment in The Jungle Books where he realises how the wolves in general hate him and he just stands there crying…because he has never understood that he was different. There’s a whole world there in that scene. I don’t even know if Kipling realised it when he was writing it, but it’s the utter breaking of innocence, because he thought he was part of them, that he was loved by them, that he was one of them, and then suddenly has to realise that he’s completely different and he’s not one of them.” Read more...
The best books on Childhood Innocence
Ann Widdecombe, Novelist
Our most recommended books
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Danny Champion of the World
by Roald Dahl -
From The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs Basil E. Frankweiler
by E L Konigsburg -
Inventors: Incredible Stories of the World's Most Ingenious Inventions
by Robert Winston & Jessamy Hawke (illustrator) -
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
by Lewis Carroll -
Harry Potter: the Complete Series
by J.K. Rowling -
Carrie's War
Nina Bawden, Alan Marks (illustrator)