Comparing Bod and Mowgli

Throughout our discussions of The Jungle Book and The Graveyard Book thus far, the class seems to only want to focus on how Bod and Mowgli differ in their behaviors within their respective habitats. While I would agree that the two are immensely different in how they interact with others around them, the two protagonists demonstrate high degrees of cunning and thus prove to the guardians of the graveyard or the jungle that the two boys will be able to take care of themselves upon leaving their adoptive families
Mowgli shows his courage and bravery many times throughout The Jungle Book, but the most obvious example comes at the defeat of Shere Khan. Throughout Mowgli's time in the jungle, he has always known to be wary of Shere Khan and the tiger's desire to kill him. So, when Mowgli leaves the jungle to become integrated into a nearby human village, Shere Khan decides to make a move for Mowgli as he herds a pasture of cows. Using his cunning, Mowgli used his friends from the Jungle to aid him in luring his cattle to a stampede over Shere Khan, killing the beast.
Bod performs a similar feat in the graveyard when the Jacks of All Trades ambush him in the graveyard in a similar act of malice as Shere Khan. Bod uses cunning, much like Mowgli's, to defeat each member of the organization, using the graveyard and its resources to trap and break the ankle of one Jack, banish another three to the void of ghouls located within a grave, and pull the final Jack into another void "through the (mausoleum) wall, pulled into the rock, being swallowed up by it" (Gaiman 285), all acts boding ill for the organization.
In both situations, the boys had a lot to lose if their plans had gone wrong or not been enacted at all. Clearly, had no action been taken, the boys would have likely been murdered at the hands of their enemies. And if the plans had gone wrong, Mowgli could have lost Akela, his friend, and the herd of cattle to Shere Khan, or Bod could have lost  his friend Scarlett to the man Jack. Through the boys' bravery and cunning, the jungle and the graveyard ended up much safer than when Shere Khan or the man Jack had been on their hunts for the boys.
Through their courage, Mowgli and Bod demonstrate that although the two may have differences in the manner they were raised or how their environment shaped who they would later become, bravery and cunning could be found in both boys and through these traits they positively aided their respective homes.