Just So Stories - Hardcover

Kipling, Rudyard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1944686444 ISBN 13: 9781944686444

Publisher: Racehorse for Young Readers, 2016

Synopsis

For Mowgli movie fans, the must-have companion to The Jungle Book!

Children all around the world are fascinated by the animal kingdom, and that’s what makes the Just So Stories a perennial classic... Elephants, kangaroos, cats, leopards, and more. This complete volume of Rudyard Kipling’s masterpiece includes all 12 original stories:

How the Whale Got His Throat

How the Camel Got His Hump

How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin

How the Leopard Got His Spots

The Elephant’s Child

The Sing-Song of Old Man Kangaroo

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

The Butterfly that Stamped

Kipling first entertained his own children with these delightful and humorous tales before deciding to write them down for publication. The parables are written in the form of what came to be known as “why” stories, each explaining how and why certain things came to be as they are.

In addition to these clever fables, this volume features thirteen full-color illustrations and more than thirty black-and-white illustrations by J. M. Gleeson and Paul Bransom, as well as several images created by Kipling himself. With their entertaining characters and well-executed narrative arcs, the Just So Stories are perfect for readers both young and old—to read separately and, more importantly, together.

About this title

From the Author:

Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay, India, in 1865. Kipling was one of the most revered writers in recent history, and many of his works are deemed classic literature. To this day, he maintains an avid following and reputation as one of the greatest storytellers of the past two centuries. He published hundreds of short stories, novels, and poetry collections, including the short story The Man Who Would Be King” and the famed poem If.” In 1907, he received the Nobel Prize for Literature. He died in 1936, but his stories live on even nearly one hundred years after his passing.

J. M. Gleeson and Paul Bransom were both illustrators during the early 1900s.

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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Racehorse for Young Readers
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1944686444
• ISBN 13: 9781944686444
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 256
• Illustrator: Bransom Paul, Gleeson J. M.