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Captains Courageous
Altho the links to preview this book take you to the prose version of Captains Courageous, the book I received with this cover is actually a comic book adaptation similar to the Illustrated Classics of the '50s and '60s.It's not badly done, but certainly was a disappointment when I looked at it: I thought I was getting the classic prose that Kipling wrote.If the prose version what you want, I'd look at another listing.
Captains Courageous
Rudyard Kipling's story telling is still compelling a century later. The dangers and privation in the fishing industry of the time are appaling by present standards in what is still a dangerous business. The journey into manhood and the development of character, as well s the quality of mentoring is still inspiring.
Captains Courageous
Rudyard Kipling's original 1897 novelistic way of telling CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS offered many things to many readers. It was short, nautical, cod-fishing oriented, about a spoiled rich kid Harvey (Harve) Cheyne, Jr., given a bloody nose and made to grow up quickly among a small multi-national body of fishermen good at their work. The nine other males, all lacing their speech with sea jargon, were gifted with plenty of gab to fill idle hours at night or during bad weather with tales of the sea. Kipling also wrote of the lost at sea boy's grieving mother and of his self-made multi-millionaire father. These simple elements are well translated for children ten years and older by adapter Malvina Vogel and illustrator Max Landgraf.But Kipling's original in addition to its simple plot had depths that fascinate and puzzle adults and keep scholars busy throughout their careers.-- CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS: the title refers to an early modern English heroine named Mary Abree who fought against Spanish "Captains Courageous" in the Netherlands. A major puzzle: what is the title's relevance to a Kipling's story in which the only females to have any roles worth mentioning are two mothers concerned for their teen age sons at sea, along with one young woman grieving for her recently drowned,fiance, yet another teen on whom a boy on Harve's schooner has a schoolboy crush and finally a flock of Portuguese beauties in Gloucester courted by Manuel -- the fisherman, who plucked drowning Harve from the Atlantic?-- Symbolism abounds in the novel -- secular, religious, supernatural, superstitious: the sea as baptism, Captain Troop's bloodying young Harve Cheyne's nose as analogous to a bishop's wake up slap at Confirmation, the 70-ton fishing schooner We're Here as small floating monastery full of hard working celibate male monks who welcome 15-year old Harve as a novice.-- Kipling also warned against the then already increasing contemporary excesses of America's Gilded Age led by ill-educated Captain of Industry Harvey Cheyne, Sr. and against the extra amoral self-seeking future edge that tycoons like Cheyne will gain when their offspring take degrees from Stanford and their great grandchildren flourish Harvard M.B.A.s.Kipling's text, though not long as novels go, is probably six times longer than adapter Malvina Vogel's. Fortunately for young readers, illustrator Ken Landgraf's sketches take up just as many pages as Vogel's shortened text. Vogel, unlike some of the three film versions of CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS, retains all of Kipling's major characters and Landgraf sketches each of them, including the barely mentioned girl friend of 15-year old Harve's year older teenage shipmate and friend Dan Troop aboard the 70-ton fishing schooner We're Here.There are several things that the 2002 Vogel-Landgraf Great Illustrated Classics version of CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS have made me think about. I will conclude this review with just one of them. No matter which version of CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS I have dealt with: (the original in both a scholarly and a non-scholarly edition, the simplified illustrated abridgment of Vogel-Landgraf and the three filmed versions), I have always found it hard to believe that a successful search for young Harve might not have been made.-- First: might not the liner that he fell overboard from, have halted and begun to ask the numerous fishing boats on the Grand Banks if they had heard of a boy being picked up from the sea?-- Second, the fishing schooners, some more often than others, would put into Canadian or French ports in the Bay of Saint Lawrence for bait, supplies, new sails, etc. Kipling tells us that it did not take long for news of Harvey's rescue to spread through the regular "fleet" of 100 schooners out for three months of fishing. Why wasn't one of them, once it reached land, asked to send a telegram or write a letter at least to a newspaper about the happy event?In Kipling's Chapter Seven, an ocean liner traveling at 20 knots in thick fog cuts the fishing trawler Jennie Cushman in half. There are only two survivors. Harve Cheyne's We're Here picks up one, its captain. The nearby schooner Carrie Pitman rescues the Captain's injured son. The Carrie Pitman's captain then invites the father to join their depleted crew for the rest of the fishing season and to be with his son.The captain of the Carrie Pitman said in Kipling's words: "We're runnin' in fer more bait an' graound tackle." In her version, Malvina Vogel writes of the Carrie Pitman: "She was headed back to Gloucester for more bait." That is not likely. For Gloucester, Massacusetts, home port for 30 or 40 of the fishing schooners, is a thousand miles to the southwest.The Carrie Pitman would have gone somewhere much closer for bait and ground tackle. But she wherever she went would have been inhabited dry land: island or continent.QUESTIONS:-- Why didn't 15-year old Harve Cheyne ask to be transferred forthwith to the Carrie Pitman and get back to his parents as fast as possible?-- Why didn't Harve's rescuer Captain Disko Troop not suggest the same thing?-- Or at least write a letter to be passed to a newspaper?I noticed this apparent gaffe by Kipling only when Malvina Vogel rewrote it as an impossibly bigger gaffe.I plan to read the simplified, illustrated Vogel - Landgraf edition to the three youngest of my six grandsons when my wife and I drive 75 miles south tomorrow to overnight with them. Later I will give it to them as a present. I do not doubt that they will eat it up and ask for more.-OOO-
Captains Courageous
This book by Kipling is impressive.Though it is not as good as Harry Potter and other books it is well thought out and has a good choice of words which improves vocablary immensly. The story is imaginative and the characters of Harvey, Dan Troop and others are well described. Though this book is interesting it does not absorb or engross you. Mr. Kipling did a better job in his other books like Oliver Twist etc. Though the book is original and the hard work is visible it is not any masterpiece. From spoilt children to fishermen the book has its own world. Though I have read it many a time with interest and liked it better each time I have liked Rudyard Kipling's other books better still. It is a great book for sea lovers.
Captains Courageous
While the plot may be a bit outdated (we don't go in so much for moral improvement stories these days), the real star of Captains Courageous for me was the documentation of life aboard a cod trawler at the end of the last century. All-night gutting and salting sessions, life among the fleet, the risks and lifestyle -- all fascinating. I read it in conjunction with Cod: Biography of the Fish that Changed the World, and the two together were a terrific education in how exactly fish gets onto our plates, and the risks that people take to get it there.
Captains Courageous
As others have noted, this is the tale of a spoiled rich brat, who has the very good luck to fall off a luxury ocean-liner at sea, and be introduced to the Real World of hard work, earned money, and self-respect which is deserved.Rudyard Kipling once again shows himself to be a master story-teller, and the story of the friendship that grows between the Portuguese fisherman, Manuel, and the former brat, Harvey Cheyne, is memorable.If you like this book, be sure to see the classic movie made from it, with Spencer Tracy as Manuel.