Maoglee Putara, Wizard of the Jungle

With its roots in Rudyard Kipling's fantastical Jungle Book world, with a nod to the 'discovered wizard' world of prodigy magicians, and a knowing smile at traditions of shape-shifting animal stories, this mashup of youthful exuberance, strong female characters, and life in Kipling's Punjabi forests presents a new Maoglee and a new jungle world.

Here is a boy who loses not one, but two families to the dark shifter wizard Shir Khan, yet finds a third in the shapeshifting couple of Bahlu the black bear and Bugira the black panther.

They raise him in the tradition of Jungle Law, all the while the three of them knowing he must face the tiger-wizard before he grows into manhood.

Maoglee is tough, fierce, and sometimes foolish, but he learns well from his adoptive parents and in the end, he does not shy from his fate, but embraces it calculatingly.