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Macmillan Children’s Books (MCB) will this September publish a collection of stories, based on Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, by Katherine Rundell.
Into the Jungle is a collection of “origin stories”, penned by Rundell and illustrated by Kristjana S Williams, about each of the Jungle Book characters, including Baloo, Shere Khan and Bagheera. It will be published on 20th September in hardback (r.r.p. £16.99) to tie in with the new Mowgli motion picture from Warner Bros, which will be released in October.
Talking about what inspired her to write the stories, Rundell said: “For me what makes The Jungle Book such an exceptional piece of work for the period is that Mowgli, despite his extremely unusual upbringing, is true to what the best children are: stubborn, boastful, loving, egotistical, loyal, brave, and wild. You wouldn’t necessarily like Mowgli were you to meet him on a bad day – nor, more importantly, would he be guaranteed to like you – but you would not be able to ignore how intensely alive he was. For me, as I grew up, Mowgli was real.
“Equally real to me were Shere Khan, Kaa and Mother Wolf; and at eight years old I had an admiration that bordered on romantic for Bagheera, so sleek and enigmatic. Perhaps most of all I loved the lumbering, generous heart of Baloo.”
Venetia Gosling, 6+ publisher at MCB, acquired world rights from Claire Wilson at Rogers, Coleridge and White. North American rights have been sold to Susan Van Metre at Walker Books US, a division of Candlewick Press.
Rundell is also published by Bloomsbury Children’s Books and her latest novel with them, The Explorer, won the Costa Children’s Book Award.