The Jungle Book

10-12 min read
17 pages

The Jungle Book, retold for reading aloud. A boy raised by wolves, taught by a bear and a black panther, and hunted by a tiger who never forgot him.

It was seven o'clock on a very warm evening in the Seeonee hills when Father Wolf woke up, scratched himself and yawned. Mother Wolf lay with her four cubs, and the moon shone into the mouth of the cave.

Something came whimpering up the hill: a naked brown baby who could just walk, who pushed in among the cubs and laughed. Mother Wolf said, «Is that a man's cub? I have never seen one. Bring it here.»

The moonlight was blocked at the mouth of the cave. Shere Khan the tiger had come, lame from an old burn, and he said the man's cub was his and he wanted it. Mother Wolf stood up and said the cub was hers, and would live and run with the Pack — and Shere Khan, who could not get into the cave, went away saying they would see.

So the boy was taken to the Council Rock, where the Pack looks over its cubs. The law says two who are not his father and mother must speak for a cub. Baloo the brown bear, who teaches the cubs the Law, spoke first. Bagheera the black panther spoke second, and paid a freshly killed bull besides, and the Pack said: «Let him run with us.»

They called him Mowgli, the Frog, because of his smooth skin. For ten years he ran with the wolves, and Baloo taught him the Master Words of the jungle — the words that make every bird and beast and snake a friend — and Bagheera taught him to climb and to be silent.

Only one thing Bagheera told him again and again: «Shere Khan is your enemy, and one day the Pack will turn, because Akela the leader is growing old, and a young wolf believes what he is told.»

One hot afternoon Mowgli lay among the branches, and the Monkey-People came. They had been watching him, because he made shelters out of sticks, and they wanted him to teach them. They took him by the arms and carried him away over the treetops.

Mowgli, swinging half a mile above the ground, remembered the Master Word of the birds and called it to Chil the kite, and asked him to mark where he was taken and tell Baloo. Chil whistled that he would.

They brought him to the Cold Lairs, a ruined city with a marble pavilion and a snake in the wall, and they sat him in the middle and talked and boasted and forgot what they had brought him for, which is the whole trouble with the Bandar-log.

Baloo and Bagheera came, and with them Kaa the rock python, who is thirty feet long and whom the monkeys fear more than anything in the jungle. In the fight in the ruined city, Mowgli was pushed into a summer-house full of cobras and told to keep still, and he kept still.

Kaa broke the wall and the monkeys fled, and Kaa asked nothing for it except that Mowgli should remember. Bagheera said quietly afterwards that the boy had been in more danger from the monkeys' forgetting than from their teeth.

Then Akela missed his kill, as old wolves do, and at the Council Rock the young wolves said what Shere Khan had taught them to say: that a man's cub had no place among them.

Bagheera had told Mowgli what to do, and Mowgli had gone down to the village and brought back a pot of the Red Flower — which is what the jungle calls fire, because no beast will say the word.

He stood up at the Council Rock with the fire-pot in his hand, and the whole Pack drew back from it. He said that he had been called a man's cub often enough that night, and that from this time he would be one.

He thrust a dry branch into the pot until it blazed, and the tiger who had hunted him for ten years crouched flat and let himself be driven, and Mowgli beat him over the head with fire and told him to go.

Then something began to hurt Mowgli that had never hurt him before, and he did not know what it was. Bagheera said: «Those are tears, Little Brother. Now you are a man.»

He went down the hillside alone towards the lights of the village, and he did not look back at the cave or the Council Rock. But he came again, many times, to hunt with the four cubs who had been his brothers — and that is another story.

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Text source: Plot by Rudyard Kipling (1894), public domain. The text was written anew for Marytale and shortened for reading aloud — it is not a reprint of anyone else's version.

The Jungle Book characters

Mowgli: A boy raised by wolves and called the Frog for his smooth skin. He is a man's cub the whole way through, and the jungle reminds him of it at the worst moment.
Bagheera: The black panther who buys Mowgli's life with a freshly killed bull. He teaches him to climb and to be silent, and he is the one who sees what is coming.
Baloo: The brown bear who teaches the cubs the Law of the Jungle and the Master Words. Sleepy, patient, and the only one who thinks lessons matter.
Shere Khan: The lame tiger who claims Mowgli on his first night and hunts him for ten years. He does not win by strength; he wins by telling young wolves what to think.
Kaa: A rock python thirty feet long, feared by the monkeys more than anything in the jungle. He helps at the Cold Lairs and asks nothing for it.
Akela: The lone wolf who leads the Pack. When he misses his kill, the Pack turns — and that is the law, not treachery.
Mother Wolf (Raksha): Stands over her cubs and refuses to give the man's cub to a tiger. Her name means the Demon, and she earns it once.
The Bandar-log: The Monkey-People, who have no law, no leader and no memory. They carry Mowgli off because he can make things, and forget why before they arrive.
The Red Flower: What the jungle calls fire, because no beast will say the word. It is the thing that makes Mowgli a man and ends his life with the Pack.

Want to know where these stories come from? The articles are here

The Jungle Book

The Jungle Book characters

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