Just So Stories, Volume II - Hardcover

Kipling, Rudyard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1554982138 ISBN 13: 9781554982134

Publisher: Groundwood Books, 2014

Synopsis

Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories is one of the best-loved story collections ever written for children. In this companion to Volume I, acclaimed children’s book illustrator Ian Wallace once again reinterprets the famous tales with luminous art, bringing Kipling to a new generation of young readers. Many of the tales are origin stories, explaining, for example, how an animal came to be, or the how the alphabet and writing began. They all display Kipling’s vivid imagination, inventive vocabulary, and engaging wordplay. And once again Ian Wallace makes intriguing connections between the stories in his richly imagined illustrations. This volume includes The Beginning of the Armadillos,” How the First Letter Was Written,” How the Alphabet Was Made,” The Crab That Played with the Sea,” The Cat That Walked by Himself” and The Butterfly That Stamped.” The first edition of Just So Stories was published in Great Britain in 1902, along with black-and-white illustrations by Kipling himself. The stories have remained in print ever since, delighting young readers in many countries.

About this title

About the Author:

Rudyard Kipling (1865 1936) was born in India, where he returned for a time and began to write after years of schooling in England. His best-known children’s works include The Jungle Book, Kim and Just So Stories. Kipling achieved high acclaim as an author of books for children and adults, winning the Gold Medal of the Royal Society of Literature and the Nobel Prize in Literature, among many other awards. Ian Wallace has had a distinguished career as an author and illustrator of picture books. He has won the Elizabeth Mrazik-Cleaver Picture Book Award, the Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon Award, and the IODE Violet Downey Book Award. He has also been nominated for the prestigious Hans Christian Andersen Award. He lives in Brookline, MA.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

From The Beginning of the Armadilloes”

This, O Best Beloved, is another story of the High and Far-Off Times. In the very middle of those times was a Stickly-Prickly Hedgehog, and he lived on the banks of the turbid Amazon, eating shelly snails and things. And he had a friend, a Slow-Solid Tortoise, who lived on the banks of the turbid Amazon, eating green lettuces and things. And so that was all right, Best Beloved. Do you see?

But also, and at the same time, in those High and Far-Off Times, there was a Painted Jaguar, and he lived on the banks of the turbid Amazon too; and he ate everything that he could catch. When he could not catch deer or monkeys he would eat frogs and beetles; and when he could not catch frogs and beetles he went to his Mother Jaguar, and she told him how to eat hedgehogs and tortoises
* * *

From The First Letter”

So he gave Taffy the shark’s tooth, and she lay down flat on her tummy with her legs in the air, like some people on the drawing-room floor when they want to draw pictures, and she said, Now I’ll draw you some beautiful pictures! You can look over my shoulder, but you mustn’t joggle. First I’ll draw Daddy fishing. It isn’t very like him; but Mummy will know, because I’ve drawn his spear all broken. Well, now I’ll draw the other spear that he wants, the black-handled spear. It looks as if it was sticking in Daddy’s back, but that’s because the shark’s tooth slipped and this piece of bark isn’t big enough. That’s the spear I want you to fetch; so I’ll draw a picture of me myself ’splaining to you. My hair doesn’t stand up like I’ve drawn, but it’s easier to draw that way. Now I’ll draw you. I think you’re very nice really, but I can’t make you pretty in the picture, so you mustn’t be ’fended. Are you ’fended?”

About this edition

• Publisher: Groundwood Books
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1554982138
• ISBN 13: 9781554982134
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 88
• Illustrator: Wallace Ian