Based on Kipling's own adolescent experiences, Stalky & Co. is a cunning story of mischievous 19th century British schoolboys attempting scholastic mutiny. The faculty and headmaster of a boys' private school repeatedly pursue a trio of poetic pranksters, "Stalky", "Beetle" and "Turkey" as they wage war on fellow students and the "establishment" with unwavering energy and creativity.
A group of boys in a nineteenth-century British military boarding school has great fun playing pranks on one another, and later preparing for real life in the real military. Rudyard Kipling's classic, according to the introduction, is loosely based on the author's own experience. Shelly Frasier performs the narrative portions in a straightforward, solemn Midwestern dialect, while imparting various British accents to every speaking character. While her accents, in and of themselves, are reasonably accurate, the deepened tone in which they are delivered suggests middle-aged men, rather than schoolboys, and renders students indistinguishable from their teachers. She presents the entire book as a tragedy, rather than the lighthearted comedy it is. R.P.L. (c) AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine
