The Jungle Book a personalised book with your child as the hero

It was seven o'clock of a very warm evening in the Seeonee hills when Father Wolf woke from his day's rest. Mother Wolf lay with her big grey nose across her four tumbling cubs, and the moon shone into the mouth of the cave.

Then something rustled in the bushes, and there in the moonlight stood a little brown baby who could only just walk. He looked up into Father Wolf's face and laughed.

"Is that a man's cub?" said Mother Wolf. "I have never seen one. Bring it here." The little one pushed his way in among the cubs to get close to the warm hide, and he was not afraid at all.

Suddenly the moonlight was blocked out. Shere Khan, the great lame tiger, had thrust his huge square head into the cave mouth. "A man's cub went this way," he growled. "Give it to me!"

But the cave was far too narrow for a tiger to come in, and Mother Wolf sprang up with her eyes like two green moons. "The man's cub is mine," she said. "He shall run with the Pack and hunt with the Pack. Go away, Lame One!" Shere Khan backed out of the cave, grumbling, and Mother Wolf turned to the little one. "I will call you Mowgli, the Frog," she said, "for you have no fur at all."

When the cubs were old enough, Father Wolf took them all to the Pack Council at Council Rock, where Akela, the great grey Lone Wolf, lay on his flat stone under the full moon. "Look well, O Wolves!" he called. "Look well!" Mowgli sat in the middle of the circle playing with the pebbles that shone in the moonlight.

From the shadows came Shere Khan's roar: "The cub is mine!"

"Who speaks for this cub?" asked Akela.

Up stood Baloo, the sleepy brown bear who teaches the wolf cubs the Law of the Jungle. "I speak for the man's cub," he said. "Let him run with the Pack. I myself will teach him." Then a black shadow dropped into the circle. It was Bagheera the Black Panther, whose voice was as soft as wild honey. "To Baloo's good word," said Bagheera, "I will add a fat bull from the valley, if you will keep him." And so the Pack agreed, and Mowgli became a wolf of the Seeonee Pack.

He grew up with the cubs. Baloo taught him the Law of the Jungle, and the Master Words for every people of the jungle: "We be of one blood, ye and I." Bagheera taught him to climb as well as he could swim, and to swim almost as well as he could run.

The only ones who did not keep the Law were the Bandar-log, the Monkey-People. They chattered all day and forgot everything at once. One afternoon they swung down, gave Mowgli nuts, told him he was very clever, and then whisked him away up into the treetops. Off they went, leaping from branch to branch, with Mowgli swinging on the creepers among them and the green jungle far, far below.

High above flew Chil the Kite. Mowgli called up to him the Master Words of the Birds: "We be of one blood, ye and I! Mark my trail! Tell Baloo and Bagheera!"

Down on the ground, Baloo and Bagheera hurried to Kaa, the great Rock Python, who lay sunning his thirty feet of shining coils on a warm ledge. "The Bandar-log have taken our man-cub," said Baloo, "and they fear only you."

"They call me a worm, do they?" hissed Kaa. "Then let us go."

The monkeys carried Mowgli to Cold Lairs, a ruined city of the old kings, deep in the jungle, where roots had cracked the marble and trees grew out of the palace roofs. They shut him in a summer-house with a broken dome and danced on the walls, shouting that he would teach them everything.

Then the moon rose. Bagheera came bounding over the ruins, and Baloo came lumbering up through the stones, and the monkeys rushed at them, shrieking. At last Kaa slid over the broken wall. The monkeys fell silent. Kaa began to sway in the moonlight, coil upon coil, in his Hunger Dance, and every monkey stood frozen, staring. Even Baloo and Bagheera began to feel dreamy. But Mowgli was not spellbound. "Come away!" he called softly, and he led his friends out of Cold Lairs and home.

Years went by, and Akela grew old. Shere Khan whispered to the young wolves that a man's cub had no place in the Pack. "Go down to the village," said Bagheera, "and fetch the Red Flower. Every beast of the jungle fears it."

So that night Mowgli crept to the village and carried back a little clay pot full of glowing embers. At the next Council, when Shere Khan roared for him, Mowgli stood up tall, plunged a dead branch into the pot and held it high. The Red Flower blazed above his head. Shere Khan and the young wolves turned tail and ran off into the night, and Akela was safe.

Then something hurt inside Mowgli, and tears ran down his face. "That is only tears, Little Brother," said Bagheera. "You are a man now."

At dawn Mowgli said goodbye at the foot of the hill to Mother Wolf, Father Wolf and his four brothers. "I will come back," he promised. Then he walked down out of the jungle to the fields, where a kind woman named Messua stood at her door with a bowl of warm milk and bread for him. And from between the trees, his wolf family watched him go.