Cecil’s Pride: The True Story of
a Lion King. By Craig, Juliana and Isabella Hatkoff. Photographs by Brent
Stapelkamp. Scholastic. $17.99.
The Jungle Book. By Rudyard
Kipling. Retold by Laura Driscoll. Illustrated by Migy Blanco. Harper. $17.99.
Nature is not nice. No
matter how humans glorify the natural world (as if humans were not themselves
part of it), the fact is that animals are engaged 100% of the time in a fight
to survive, reproduce and pass on their genes to a new generation (some would
argue that so are humans, but that is another discussion). Cecil’s Pride could easily have been another “nature is grand”
glorification of a regal-looking (to human eyes) lion whose killing by a hunter
sparked anger and protests around the world – even though the hunt was
legitimate, or the hunter had reason to believe it was. And to some extent, the
writing by Craig Hatkoff and his daughters, Juliana and Isabella, is indeed a
celebration of the lion that was given the human name Cecil by human observers.
But the book is more than that, and better as a result. Photographer Brent
Stapelkamp is a lion researcher who tracked and studied Cecil for nine years,
and his excellent pictures show the inner workings of a lion pride in ways that
make the book more lively and intriguing than it would be if it consisted only
of celebratory, posed-looking photos. Thanks to Stapelkamp’s pictures and the
Hatkoffs’ text, it is clear that Cecil’s life was not an easy or idyllic one:
animals’ lives in the wild never are. The narrative explains how lion prides
are formed and how they change, and it tells the story of how Cecil and his
brother, named Leander by humans, fought for territory with a lion called
Mpofu– resulting in Leander’s death – and what happened afterwards. This is
actually the most remarkable part of the whole tale: Cecil fought with one of
Mpofu’s sons, called Jericho by humans, but then the two actually paired up to
rule territory together. This is almost unheard-of among lions, and even though
Cecil’s Pride does not go into great
detail about what happened, the Hatkoffs do convey a sense of surprise, even
wonder, at the development. The book traces events affecting the Cecil/Jericho
pride up to and including Cecil’s death and even thereafter – when, surprise
upon surprise, Jericho accepted and in effect adopted Cecil’s cubs as his own,
an extremely rare occurrence in a natural world in which (as the Hatkoffs
explain at the end of the book), “the new leader of a pride wants to continue
his bloodline” and therefore often kills the cubs of the previous leader,
contributing to the 70% mortality rate for cubs before they mature. This
underlying reality is what nature is all about, and an aspect that the usual
“pretty” books about the natural world go out of their way to avoid discussing
with young readers. Cecil’s Pride is
all the stronger because it does not shrink from explaining the unpleasant
realities of life in the wild – even as it simultaneously celebrates Cecil’s
life and bemoans his death. And yes, the photos throughout really do show lions
looking amazingly majestic and their cubs looking wonderfully cute – to human
eyes, to be sure, but humans are part
of nature, and hopefully young readers will pick up some of that reality by
reading and seeing this book.
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
was well aware from his own life experiences of nature’s realities, and if he
is today read much less often than he used to be, that is because he was
decidedly enamored of the British colonial experience on which the world and
Great Britain itself have emphatically turned their backs since Kipling won a
Nobel Prize in Literature in 1907. Modified, rewritten versions of some of Kipling’s
works do, however, continue to be popular, stripped of their colonialist
orientation and stylistic quirks (“o Best Beloved” in the Just So Stories, and all the rest). Kipling’s coupling of
imaginative storytelling with a fine sense of natural reality shines through
even in highly simplified versions of his writings, such as Laura Driscoll’s
version of The Jungle Book. Although
intended for ages 4-8, this book, with its warm and pleasantly rounded
illustrations by Migy Blanco, could appeal to even-younger children – there is
not even much menace in the appearance of Shere Khan here, and his reasons for
demanding that Mowgli be turned over to him (along with his plans if that
happens) are never brought to the fore. The smiling, thoroughly anthropomorphic
renderings of Baloo and Bagheera, and the very, very young-looking Mowgli
himself, make this into a pleasant, almost back-yard-style adventure rather
than a serious foray into the dangers and delights of the wild. Mowgli smiles
almost constantly, even when keeping bees away while taking honey from them and
splashing before entering a stream to keep water snakes back. The whole tone of
this retelling is gentle and rather sweet, appropriate for very young children
and fitting well within the realm of children’s books for a 21st-century
audience – and unlikely to result in those children wanting to track down the
much darker original Jungle Book or
read more of Kipling’s stories, which is something of a shame. This
simplification may, however, result in kids wanting to see the 1967 Disney
animated version of The Jungle Book,
which had its own quirks and oddities and which Walt Disney himself insisted be
made by animators who had not read Kipling’s original; or it may attract today’s
kids to the Disney studio’s new live-action remake. In any of these guises –
especially Kipling’s original, but even in the cuddliness of Driscoll and
Blanco – The Jungle Book still has
the power to captivate through its blending of fantasy with a sure
understanding of the attractions and frights of the natural world.
No comments:
Post a Comment