Kipling's Children's Literature: Language, Identity, and Constructions of Childhood.(Book review)

Kipling's Children's Literature: Language, Identity, and Constructions of Childhood, by Sue Walsh; pp. 174. Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate, 2010, 55.00 [pounds sterling], $99.95.

Among general readers, Rudyard Kipling has been seen preeminently as a writer of children's books. Literary criticism of the last thirty years, however, has often treated him less as a children's writer than as the author of colonial fictions. It is a welcome development, then, to see increasing critical attention paid to Kipling as the creator of tales for children, such as The Jungle Book (1894), The Second Jungle Book (1895), Kim (1901), Just So Stories (1902), Puck of Pook's Hill (1906), and Rewards and Fairies (1910). Sue Walsh's book represents an incisive contribution to this heightened interest.

In this forceful, closely argued monograph, Walsh challenges not only current critical approaches to Kipling as a colonial writer but also recent …