The Jungle Book
Rudyard Kipling, 1894.
Before you read: The stories include hunting and danger. They were written in British colonial India. Read the animal tales as stories, not as a lesson about real people.
Mowgli is a human child raised by wolves, taught by Baloo, and hunted by the tiger Shere Khan. Around that story Kipling set other tales: a mongoose named Rikki-tikki-tavi, a white seal, and working animals of an army camp. The jungle has a law, and the law is not the same as kindness. The book is an adventure and also a picture of the empire Kipling believed in. Families can enjoy the animal plots and still say plainly that the frame is old and one-sided.
Public-domain text.