3 amazing facts about The Jungle Book that you didn't know
Celebrated English author Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book needs no introduction. All of you have either read this collection of stories revolving around a feral child Mowgli or watched it as a movie or animation film. In The Jungle Book, an 1894 publication, Mowgli is brought up in an Indian forest by a pack of wolves with the help of Baloo the bear and Bagheera the black panther. They teach him the "Law of the Jungle". A few years down the line, a tiger named Shere Khan threatened the wolfpack and Mowgli. Finally, Mowgli drives off the tiger. As he matures, Mowgli falls into several difficulties and adventures, only to be saved by his animal family.
The Jungle Book has been adapted into numerous films and plays so far. The first motion picture adaptation of Kipling’s Jungle Book, directed by Hungarian-born motion picture Zoltan Korda, was aired in 1942, as an action-adventure film. But the Jungle Book, released in 1967, is the most well-known adaptation so far. It was an animated comedy film that was produced by Walt Disney Productions. The second part of the Jungle Book ‘The Jungle Book 2’, came out in 2003, produced by Disney Toon Studios. In 2016, another Jungle Book movie was released, which was a remake of the Jungle book released in 1967, this time using special effects.
Let’s explore some amazing facts about this book, that you probably didn’t know about.
The Jungle Book is dedicated to Kipling’s daughter Josephine
The Jungle Book's backstory is quite touching. In 1892, Kipling and his wife, Caroline Balestier, welcomed their first child, a daughter they named ‘Josephine.’ Kipling had started the first manuscript of The Jungle Book before their daughter was born. It is evident that Kipling wrote this collection of stories for his daughter, as the first edition of the book had a handwritten note inside. It said, ‘This book belongs to Josephine’. Unfortunately, Josephine was only 6 years old when she lost her life to pneumonia.
One film adaptation won the Academy awards
The 2016 film adaptation of The Jungle Book, directed and produced by American filmmaker and actor Jon Favreau, went on to win an Academy Award in the category for Best Visual Effects. The other films, which were nominated for Academy Awards are the 1942 version and Walt Disney’s The Jungle Book (1967).
The Jungle Book Movie Was Walt Disney’s Last Movie
The Jungle Book movie, released in 1967, was the last movie on which Walt Disney himself worked. On December 15, 1966, he passed away from lung cancer in Burbank, California, while the Jungle Book was still being made. After his death, the studio closed for a day and reopened again to resume unfinished work on his film. The movie was released in the following year, on October 18, 1967. After Disney’s death, the future of the Disney Studio appeared to be in danger, but the movie ended up being the 4th highest-grossing film of the year.