Let’s welcome April 2025 with a new book of the month: The Jungle Book, by Rudyard Kipling. Originally published in 1984, the book is a collection of short stories, three of them following a boy called Mowgli, who was raised in the jungle by wolves.

Mowgli’s stories are called Mowgli’s Brothers, Kaa’s Hunting, and Tiger! Tiger!. The other short stories are as follows: The White Seal, in which a seal hunts for a place to be free of hunting humans, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, which is the story of a mongoose that saves a family from two snakes, Toomai of the Elephants, which follows a boy who sees elephants dance, and His Majesty’s Servants, which is a conversation of different animals in the army it night. Each story tells about animals and how they work together or live around one another.

The Law of the Jungle, which never orders anything without a reason, forbids every beast to eat Man except when he is killing to show his children how to kill, and then he must hunt outside the hunting grounds of his pack or tribe.

-Rudyard Kipling, Mowgli’s Brothers

Each story starts with a poem and ends with a song, and contains a clear fable, which is traditional for some children’s stories of this era. The book is more well known for the movie it was made into, but the original stories are fun enough that adults will enjoy reading them to children.

The personification of animals is a classic trope in kid’s stories, but that just adds to the charm of these texts. The book doesn’t only serve as entertainment; with its fables, it can be a good learning oppourtunity for children about how to behave and trreat others. I would reccomend this book to anyone with young children, and I enjoyed reading it on my own as well.

• Rating: 𝙶
• Author: Rudyard Kipling
• Published: 1984
• Review: ★★★★t☆

Here it is: the very first book of the month! The book for March 2025 is Stephen King’s Fairy Tale. Published in 2022, King states in his foreword that he asked himself “What could he write that would make him happy?”.

The book follows Charlie Reade, a highschool student who is tasked by a dying man to descend into another world and save the life of the man’s dog, Radar. Throughout the book, we see a lot of Charlie’s deep thoughts, particuarly about good vs evil, and the influence of stories.

“He had been told the story of the sky-sisters as a child, and as you probably know for yourself, dear reader, it’s the stories of our childhood that make the deepest impressions and last the longest.”

-Stephen King, Fairy Tale

The story, as seen through Charlie’s eyes, has moments of both sarcasm and utter seriousness. Following him as he progresses through the fairy tale world, we can see how he learns not only more about the people and history there, he learns more about himself and his own world. King utterly suceeds with his take on the Chosen One trope, a difficult task to make so refreshing and unique. The rich description and mix of action and slower, more contemplative sections of the book are what make it come alive.

The complexity of the story, along with Charlie’s thoughts, immersed me and made me deeply care about the characters. Fairy Tale is a book that can be the centre for long and interesting discussions about many topics, and I’d highly recommend it to almost anyone I come across.