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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Carrie's War
Nina Bawden, Alan Marks (illustrator) -
How Was That Built? The Stories Behind Awesome Structures
Roma Agrawal, Katie Hickey (illustrator) -
The Secret Garden
by Frances Hodgson Burnett -
Reckless: The Petrified Flesh
Cornelia Funke, translated by Oliver Latsch -
The Wind in the Willows
by Kenneth Grahame -
Ben Rothery's Deadly and Dangerous Animals
by Ben Rothery
