Just So Stories - Softcover

Kipling, Rudyard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0141442409 ISBN 13: 9780141442402

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 2011

Synopsis

A relentlessly inventive collection of myths that betray a deep love and respect for the natural world

A Penguin Classic

The Camel gets his Hump, the Whale his Throat, and the Leopard his Spots in these bewitching stories that conjure up distant lands, the beautiful gardens of splendid palaces, and the jungle and its creatures. Inspired by Rudyard Kipling's delight in human eccentricities and the animal world, and based on bedtime stories he told to his daughter, these strikingly imaginative fables explore the myths of creation, the nature of beasts, and the origins of language and writing. They are linked by poems and scattered with Kipling's illustrations, which contain hidden jokes, symbols, and puzzles.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

How did the camel get his hump? Why won't cats do as they are told? Who invented reading and writing? How did an inquisitive little elephant change the lives of elephants everywhere? Kipling's imagined answers to such questions draw on the beast fables he heard as a child in India, as well as on folk games with language, exploring the relationships between thought, speech, and the written word. He also celebrates his own joy in fatherhood. The tales were told to his own and his friends' children over many years before he wrote them down, adding poems and his own illustrations. They invite older and younger readers to share a magical experience, each contributing to the other's pleasure, but each can also enjoy them alone, as more jokes, subtexts, and exotic references emerge with every reading. This fully illustrated edition includes two extra stories and Kipling's own explanation of the title.

From the Inside Flap:

Kipling's own drawings, with their long, funny captions, illustrate his hilarious explanations of How the Camel Got His Hump, How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin, How the Armadillo Happened, and other animal How's. He began inventing these stories in his American wife's hometown of Brattleboro, Vermont, to amuse his eldest daughter--and they have served ever since as a source of laughter for children everywhere.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0141442409
• ISBN 13: 9780141442402
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368
• Editor: Plotz Judith, Montefiore Jan