Jungle Book, originally published in 1893, is a charming collection of seven short stories, drawn from Rudyard Kipling's travels throughout the world and particularly throughout the colonies of the British Empire. Travel in the 19th century was the privilege of the wealthy, and other parts of the world were vastly different from his home in Britain. Kipling shows the reader the different customs and ways of life in India, Afghanistan and the Bering Sea, in a way that is human and familiar, rather than foreign. He also touches on the prejudices and hypocrisy that mark the British colonies.

That Kipling loved to travel and loved learning about new peoples comes out clearly in his writing. In Jungle Book, he creates a magical world in which animals talk and reason. In "Mowgli's Brothers," he tells the tale of a young human baby, Mowgli, found in the wilderness by...