This story takes all of maybe 20 minutes to read, so the review really isn't going to say a lot. Rikki-Tikki-Tavi is about a mongoose who is taken in by a small family in India, and the consequential conflict between the cobras in the garden and himself.

This story is obviously meant for young children, perhaps to be read by a parent to a young child. My rating reflects the opinion of a far younger me. The story is quirky, yet serious. It introduces new words into a child's language in a subtle way. Not only was it enjoyable, but it had strong educational merit.

This is the short story of the mongoose, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, and how he saved the Indian family and the garden from the two cobras, Nag and Nagaina.
I was pleasantly surprised to like this story (as I've read before the Jungle Book).

This is extremely scary, suspenseful, and intense. There are many things I was terrified of as a child where I look back and don't understand what all the fuss was about, but not this. o_o It's a really well-told story, and the illustrations are amazing, but it's also terrifying.

Up to page 19 - I am surprised that the familiy where kind, usualy they be like ooh food. Its funny how Rikki is curious it just ran about to any noise it heard to inspect it. Also I am learning more about moonguses I did not know adult ones ate snakes in the first place… the more you know..I find this story adroabe to read.

Finished - I enjoyed continueing the story, and really have nothing to say anymore. The story was a delight to read and its going to be a 5 star rating

I loved the cartoon (narrated by Orson Welles and very faithfully adapted) as a child so it was delightful to read this with my children. They loved it.

I love this story. I love Michael York. We listened to this as a family during an extended drive. It's only 30 minutes long, semi-dramatized (some of the sound effects are a little hokey at times), but this is Rudyard Kipling at his best.

It's an odd experience reading this as an adult versus having it read to you as a child. In the chasm of maturity between those periods, I've heard plenty a story about Kipling's noted imperialism and ethnocentrism. Readily apparent in Rikki-Tikki-Tavi is that it represents (and intends to reproduce) a very specific kind of thinking that normalizes British expatriation (read: colonization) in India--it is therefore a subliminal work of propaganda. This is most clearly illustrated on its fourteenth page: "Every well-brought-up mongoose always hopes to be a house-mongoose some day and have rooms to run about in, and Rikki-Tikki's mother had carefully told Rikki what to do if he ever came across white men."

There is both a very clear reification of whiteness here, as well as an implication that such deference towards whiteness and self-subjugation by the autocthonous animal residents (here the Indian countrymen, of course) will bring about a kind of social equilibrium. It is written as both a call to action to young Britons and as a cautionary tale for those who might find themselves on the wrong end of empire. Rikki-Tikki-Tavi is far from a harmless tale of strength, courage, and resilience. It may have been both enchanting and spellbinding when I was six, but in historical context it's a rather tedious justification for militarization and expansionist state policies. I can say, however, that the writing is a sufficient bedtime story--it'll put you right to sleep.