This middle-grade re-imagination of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book is a nod to the original with a fresh adventure and survival story from the #1 survivalist himself, Bear Grylls. Thirteen-year-old Mak and his conservationist mother have the opportunity to travel from their home in London to a remote part of India, a village on the Wainganga River. Mak feels most at home outdoors, the wind in his hair and the chill pinching his face. But once they arrive, Mak finds India to be staggeringly different from what he expected, the suffocating heat, and the constant calls of the jungle. It’s worlds away from Britain. The villagers tease Mak with folk stories about a boy named Mowgli who went missing in the jungle as a baby and was raised by wild wolves. He knows it’s just a folk story, but Mak can’t help but be threatened by so many wild animals. When a routine outing turns treacherous, a monsoon divides Mak from his parents, leaving him alone and exposed to the dangers of the wild. He pulls himself together and throws himself into survival. A wolf befriends Mak and guides him on his journey. Mak’s quest to find his parents and his way back to the village is fraught with peril, poachers, adventure, and a new appreciation for this exotic and fearsome jungle. Spirit of the Jungle is a thrilling way to introduce new readers to The Jungle Book, written by the star of such hit wildnerness survival and reality TV shows as The Island with Bear Grylls, Man vs. Wild / Born Survivor, Bear Grylls: Mission Survive, and Running Wild with Bear Grylls.
Bear Grylls is known around the world as one of the most recognized faces of survival and outdoor adventure. Trained from an early age in martial arts and taught to climb and sail by his father, Bear went on to spend three years as a soldier in the British Special Forces, before becoming one of the youngest-ever climbers of Mount Everest. Since then he has gone on to host many extreme- adventure TV shows, including The Island with Bear Grylls, Bear Grylls’ Survival School, Man vs. Wild, Running Wild with Bear Grylls, and Survivor Games. He is also a family man, and a number-one bestselling author of more than twenty books, including the popular Mission Survival series for children.