Jungle Book Connection

Parvati, at the age of two, is teased and disliked by the other village children, including her cousins, because of the circumstances of her birth. It is truly awful that such a beautiful, sweet child is only loved by four people: her mother, two older brothers, and uncle. Because so few like her, she often plays alone. The monkeys that live in the trees trust her and even allowed her to hold one of their babies, which is really remarkable considering how few humans allow toddlers to hold infants. The funny thing about all this, though, is that I keep thinking of the Disney movies Jungle Book and Jungle Book 2. I realize the plots of these movies are completely different from that off the book so far, but Mowgli is different from the children of his adopted village in the second movie and has a certain shared trust with animals (of course) that little Parvati continues to remind me of. Another similarity is between the tiger from the movies, Shere Khan, and the child-snatching tigers that haunt Parvati's village while it was still recovering from the destructive storm. Now, if only Parvati could meet a singing bear...