The voices of The Jungle Book
16 voices in The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling. Every one is a separate voice, cast to the character as written.
- Narrator — Kipling's authoritative colonial narrator — warm, knowledgeable, fond of the animals and of the Law of the Jungle. Slightly formal, deeply admiring of natural order.
- Mowgli — The man-cub raised by wolves in the Seeonee jungle. Fearless, curious, and loyal. A child who speaks with authority among animals because he belongs to neither world fully.
- Baloo — The sleepy brown bear who teaches the Law of the Jungle to the wolf cubs. Slow-moving, patient, gruff but deeply kind. Mowgli's teacher.
- Bagheera — The black panther who bought Mowgli's life in the pack with a freshly-killed bull. Sleek, elegant, precise, and utterly dangerous when roused.
- Shere Khan — The great lame tiger, Mowgli's lifelong enemy. Arrogant, cunning, magnificent, and ultimately cowardly when faced with fire. His lameness makes him more dangerous, not less.
- Kaa — The enormous rock python, one of the oldest creatures in the jungle. Slow, hypnotic, wise, and genuinely terrifying. An ally to Mowgli but unnerving even to his friends.
- Father Wolf — The wolf who adopts the baby Mowgli and raises him as a wolf cub. Proud, principled, bound by the Law of the Jungle.
- Mother Wolf — Raksha, the Demon, who defends baby Mowgli against Shere Khan with a ferocity that terrifies even the tiger. Fierce, maternal, uncompromising.
- Akela — The great gray Lone Wolf, leader of the Seeonee pack. Dignified, aging, bound by the Law. His authority crumbles but his honour does not.
- Tabaqui — The jackal — Dish-licker — a wheedling, sycophantic scavenger who carries Shere Khan's messages and stirs up trouble for sport.
- Gray Brother — One of Father Wolf's sons and Mowgli's most loyal wolf-brother. Young, earnest, devoted.
- Rikki-Tikki-Tavi — The young mongoose who defends a British family's garden from cobras. Brave, energetic, curious — a natural killer with an earnest heart.
- Nag — The great black cobra, five feet long, who rules the garden until Rikki arrives. Cold, ancient, proud of his lineage from the first cobra who hooded the god Brahm.
- Billy — Billy the mule in the British army camp — opinionated, hard-working, irreverent. A central voice in 'Her Majesty's Servants'.
- Kotick — The white seal who refuses to accept the annual killing of his kind and spends years searching for a safe beach. Stubborn, brave, relentless.
- Little Toomai — The young elephant boy who is the only human ever to witness the elephants' midnight dance. Brave, small, awestruck.