Editing Kim (novel) (section)

==Critical assessment==
Considered by many to be Kipling's masterpiece, opinion is varied about its consideration as children's literature or not.<ref>{{cite web|title=Landmarks in the History of Children's Literature |author=Roger Blackwell Bailey, PhD |url=http://www.accd.edu/Sac/english/bailey/childlit.htm |access-date=21 September 2006 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060912070029/http://www.accd.edu/sac/english/bailey/childlit.htm |archive-date=12 September 2006 }}</ref><ref>{{cite web
 |title=Teaching American Children's Literature 
 |author=Laura Laffrado 
 |work=Western Washington University 
 |url=http://www.georgetown.edu/tamlit/newsletter/laffrado.html 
 |access-date=21 September 2006 
 |url-status=dead 
 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060906032413/http://www.georgetown.edu/tamlit/newsletter/laffrado.html 
 |archive-date= 6 September 2006 
}}</ref> [[Roger Sale]], in his history of children's literature, concludes "''Kim'' is the apotheosis of the Victorian cult of childhood, but it shines now as bright as ever, long after the Empire's collapse..."<ref>Roger Sale, ''Fairy Tales and After: from Snow White to E.B. White'' Harvard Univ. Press, 1978. p.221  {{ISBN|0-674-29157-3}}</ref>

About a reissue of the novel in 1959 by Macmillan, the reviewer writes "''Kim'' is a book worked at three levels. It is a tale of adventure...It is the drama of a boy having entirely his boy's own way...and it is the mystical [[exegesis]] of this pattern of behaviour..." This reviewer concludes "''Kim'' will endure because it is a beginning like all masterly ends..."<ref>''Times Literary Supplement'', Friday, 29 May 1959</ref><ref>Rudyard Kipling ''Kim'' Illustrated by Stuart Tresilian. Macmillan, 1959.</ref>

[[Nirad C. Chaudhuri]] considered it the best story (in English) about India – noting Kipling's appreciation of the ecological force of "the twin setting of the mountains and the plain...an unbreakable articulation between the Himalayas and the Indo-Gangetic plain".<ref>Nirad C. Chaudhuri, 'The Finest Story About India – in English', ''Encounter'' 43 (April 1957) 47-53, p. 51</ref>

In 1998, the [[Modern Library]] ranked ''Kim'' No. 78 on its list of the [[Modern Library 100 Best Novels|100 best English-language novels of the 20th century]].<ref>[http://www.modernlibrary.com/top-100/100-best-novels/  "100 Best Novels"]. Modern Library. Retrieved 31 October 2012</ref> In 2003, the book was listed on the BBC's [[The Big Read]] poll of the UK's "best-loved novel".<ref>[https://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/bigread/top200_2.shtml "BBC – The Big Read"]. BBC. April 2003, Retrieved 31 October 2012</ref>