Portrait of Rudyard Kipling.

Born in Bombay India on December 30st 1865, British author and master storyteller Rudyard Kipling was both respected as a journalist and lauded as "The Poet of the [British] Empire." In his fiction, though, he blended the best of both skills and was ultimately awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907 "in consideration of the power of observation, originality of imagination, virility of ideas, and remarkable talent for narration which characterizes [his] creations." More background information about Rudyard Kipling is available online from the Nobel E-Museum, a link from the EDSITEment-reviewed Academy of American Poets.

Turn the corner to the New Year by introducing your student to the time this author was born into and the world that he brought alive in his timeless classic ~"Rikki-Tikki-Tavi," a short story from The Jungle Book (1894)

This is an engaging example of this author's ability to mix scientific and historical fact with imaginative characters to create a believable and entertaining tale.  Illustrated E-text of "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" at the University of Virginia, available through EDSITEment-reviewed Center for Liberal Arts. Though the following EDSITEment Lesson activities are noted for elementary school level, they can be easily adapted for older grades.  My 7th grade English students reveled in the exploits of this incorrigible, cunning, and most courageous mongoose when I taught it in middle school.

Rudyard Kipling's "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi": Mixing Fact and Fiction

Students use interactive materials to learn about Rudyard Kipling's life and times, read an illustrated version of "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi," and learn how Kipling effectively uses personification by mixing fact and fiction.

Rudyard Kipling's "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi": Mixing Words and Pictures

Students read an illustrated version of "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi," examine how Kipling and visual artists mix observation with imagination to create remarkable works, and follow similar principles to create a work of their own.

Additional learning activities:

Explore India. Have your students more thoroughly explore The EDSITEment-reviewed PBS website India: Land of the Tiger. When they finish, you might challenge them to test their knowledge of India with the Himalayan Hike game!

Travel Back in Time! At the Victorian Station, available through the EDSITEment resource the Victorian Web, your students can meet the luminaries of the Victorian Era (such as Charles Dickens, Lewis Carroll, Ludwig von Beethoven, and Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky), learn about the Victorians' daily life, try Victorian games and recipes, test their knowledge of the era, and even discover a 19th-century robot!

Older students will enjoy learning about the era in which Kipling lived and wrote in this EDSITEment Lesson based on Geroge Orwell's 1931 autobiographical essay, "Shooting an Elephant," about his experience as a police officer in colonial Burma.