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From Kirkus

May 15, 2019
An examination of Rudyard Kipling's life and work through the lens of the years he spent living in the United States. Many scholars regard the once-popular writer as little more than the "jingoist Bard of Empire." In this book, Benfey (English/Mount Holyoke Coll.; Red Brick, Black Mountain, White Clay: Reflections on Art, Family, and Survival, 2012, etc.) discusses Kipling's little-discussed but highly productive "Vermont decade" to suggest that he became "the writer we know...because of his deep involvement with the United States." Benfey begins in 1889, the year Kipling traveled from Bombay to London via a route that took him east through the U.S., where he began a friendship with Mark Twain and visited the homes of other American literary idols including Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. When he arrived in London in 1890, he met an American, whom he married in 1892. On a whim, the pair bought land in Vermont while on their honeymoon. But after Kipling's savings were unexpectedly wiped out by a financial panic, they returned to New England to settle. There, Kipling, determined to become an American writer, conceived or wrote some of his greatest works: Kim, a book that would later become a must-read for CIA operatives; Captain's Courageous, which he called his "first genuine out and out American story"; and the The Jungle Book, a novel Benfey argues arose in part as Kipling's response to Vermont surroundings that made him feel he was "living in a lawless jungle." On a visit to Washington, D.C., the writer met the imperialist war hawk and rising political star Theodore Roosevelt, whom he befriended. Kipling hated the "saber-rattling" he observed among American politicians, but he also believed--as he would suggest in his poem "The White Man's Burden"--that the U.S. needed to "assume its share of the responsibilities of empire." Intelligent and well-researched, Benfey's book accomplishes a delicate feat by highlighting the complexity of Kipling's life and work without seeking to minimize his colonialist, racist views. An accessible and enlightening biography.

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From Publisher's Weekly

May 13, 2019
Benfey, a Mount Holyoke English professor, briskly and enjoyably recounts Rudyard Kipling's romance with the United States. While often associated with India, Kipling's birthplace and early home, he actually wrote two of his most famous depictions of that country, The Jungle Book and Kim (in its first draft), while living in Brattleboro, Vt., from 1892 to 1896. Benfey asserts that Kipling's sense of America as a "lawless jungle" informed the first book's depiction of a human boy being raised in an actual jungle, and that much of Kipling's philosophy about character (expressed in his famous poem "If") sprang from his admiration for such American writers as Mark Twain, whom Kipling sought out on his first American visit, in 1889. Kipling also exerted his own influence on Americans, perhaps most significantly in 1899, when Henry Cabot Lodge used Kipling's imperialist poem "The White Man's Burden" to convince his fellow U.S. senators to vote for occupying the Philippines. However, Benfey is concerned more with the personal than the political, emphasizing that the poem's publication coincided with the death of Kipling's American-born daughter, Josephine, during a visit by the Kiplings (then living in England) to Manhattan, a shattering loss that conclusively cut Kipling's American ties. This is an admirably concise account of a complex and pivotal period in a famed writer's career.

From Library Journal

May 1, 2019

Benfey (Andrew Mellon Professor of English, Mt. Holyoke Coll., MA) has written extensively on the U.S. Gilded Age (e.g., A Summer of Hummingbirds). This latest study focuses on Anglo-Indian author Rudyard Kipling (1865-1963) and his experiences in America from 1889 to 1999. With each chapter, Benfey highlights a single theme/perspective that illuminates America's effect on Kipling, his influence on American friends and colleagues such as Mark Twain, as well as significant events: a visit to the grave of poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the death of companion Wolcott Balestier, going to the Washington Zoo. The final chapter concentrates on the Vietnam War and Kipling's reflections on the imperialism and complexity of this conflict on the American psyche. Interwoven throughout are insights into the writer's relationships with his family and political and literary figures, including Theodore Roosevelt, Henry James, and Henry Adams. VERDICT More sympathetic than critical, this biography will urge those unfamiliar with Kipling's works (e.g., If, Kim, The Jungle Book) to read the classics that solidified his reputation here and abroad, earning him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1901. Highly recommended for anyone interested in late 19th-century literature. [See Prepub Alert, 1/7/19.]--Morris Hounion, New York City Coll. of Technology, Brooklyn

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

From Horn Book

July 1, 2014
Kipling's famous 1909 poem, an inspirational address to his young son (who would soon die in WWI), is given picture-book packaging. It's a mature work--tonally, conceptually, linguistically--and kids may struggle further with line breaks and page turns, but Manna's imposing watercolor scenes of a little boy cloud-gazing, scaling a cliff, and planting a tree in a barren wasteland are inspiration enough.

(Copyright 2014 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

From School Library Journal

June 1, 2014

Gr 1-4-A poignant introduction reveals the story behind Kipling's verse, providing a glimpse into the poet's family life. After losing his oldest daughter to a sudden illness, Kipling was inspired to offer this lyrical bit of fatherly advice to his young son, not knowing that just a few years later, the young man would be killed in battle in World War I. The poem begins, "If/ you can keep your head when all about you/Are losing theirs and blaming it on you" and goes on to describe a series of difficult situations the boy may encounter in his life's journey. Kipling hoped his son would take his words to heart; the poem concludes, "Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, /And-which is more-you'll be a Man, my son!" Manna illustrates each line of the poem in a series of winsome watercolors. A sturdy boy appears hiking beneath a stormy sky, fishing on a mirrorlike lake, or climbing a stony mountain in the softly colored paintings. In one fanciful scenario, he and his elegant white dog stand in a crowd of life-size medieval marionettes, accompanied by the lines "If/you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken/Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools." Charles R. Smith Jr.'s rendition (S. & S.) of Kipling's poem illustrated with sports-related photographs has a modern flair. However, Manna's nostalgic interpretation abounds with an old-fashioned appeal entirely appropriate to mark the 100th anniversary of the Great War. This beautifully crafted book will be a fine addition.-Linda L. Walkins, Saint Joseph Preparatory High School, Boston, MA

Copyright 2014 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

From Publisher's Weekly

April 28, 2014
Kipling's inspirational poemâ€Â"the one that begins, "If you can keep your head when all about you/ Are losing theirs"â€Â"describes how to preserve one's honor by the principled avoidance of political and moral pitfalls. Italian artist Manna imagines the "you" of the poem as a boy journeying through a series of watercolor landscapes: fields under billowing clouds, misty nights, craggy mountaintops. To accompany the poem's first line, Manna paints the boy watching from a great green meadow as storm clouds approach; he stands and watches with a cool head, rather than running in fear. For "If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew/ To serve your turn long after they are gone," Manna shows the boy climbing a rocky pitch, the peaks of other mountains poking through the clouds below. Flying kites represent temptation, and dull-eyed marionettes represent allies who can't be trusted ("If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken/ Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools"). Though young readers may not fathom the poem's complexities, the grandeur of Manna's scenes conveys the loftiness of Kipling's sentiments. Ages 6â€Â"8.

From Kirkus

March 15, 2014
Though at times symbolic or only obliquely related to the adjacent lines, Manna's graceful images lend luminous visual notes to Kipling's stately prescription for maturity. Originally addressed by Kipling to his son but equally applicable to people of either sex (and any age), the poem is cast as a series of generalized challenges and moral, stiff-upper-lip responses: "If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster / And treat those two imposters just the same...." The verses are presented with typographical flourishes in one to five lines per spread, with natural breaks that are neatly chosen to preserve the language's flow. In the accompanying watercolors, a solitary, ruminative lad faces a prowling wolf, wanders among costumed puppets, plants a tree amid burned rubble, reaches out with balletic focus for something on a beach and scales difficult slopes to reach a mountaintop at last. The poem is widely available in collections, but this rendition--an ethereal alternative to the edition illustrated with photographs by Charles R. Smith, Jr. (2007)--makes a lovely keepsake. (introduction) (Picture book. 8-12)

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