Considered by many to be Kipling's masterpiece, opinion is varied about its consideration as children's literature or not.[6][7] 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..."[8]
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..."[9][10]
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”.[11]
In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Kim No. 78 on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.[12] In 2003, the book was listed on the BBC's The Big Read poll of the UK's "best-loved novel".[13]
