Just So Stories

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was born in Bombay, the son of an Anglo-Indian Professor of Architectural Sculpture. There he was brought up in the care of “ayahs,” or native nurses, who taught him Hindustani and the native lore that always haunted his imagination and can be seen clearly reflected in Just So Stories. At the age of six, he was sent to school in England at Westward Ho!, the scene of Stalky & Co. In 1883, he returned to India and embarked on a career in journalism, writing the news stories as well as the tales and ballads that began to make his reputation. After seven years, he went back to England, the literary “Star of the Hour.” He married an American and stayed in Vermont from 1892 to 1894. Then he settled down in the English countryside, where he remained, except for a few trips abroad, for the rest of his life. The author of innumerable stories and poems, Rudyard Kipling is especially known for Soldiers Three (1888), The Light That Failed (1890), The Jungle Books (1894-95), Captains Courageous (1897), Stalky & Co. (1899), Kim (1901), and Just So Stories (1902). Among many other honors, he received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, and raised in Boston, Avi is the author of more than fifty books for children and young adults beginning with Things That Sometimes Happen (1970). Among his numerous awards are the Newbery Award and two Newbery Honors, two Horn Book awards, the O’Dell Historical Fiction Award, and a Christopher Award.

Shashi Deshpande is the author of nine novels, most notably The Dark Holds No Terrors, That Long Silence, A Matter of Time, Small Remedies, and In the Country of Deceit, which was shortlisted for the Regional Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. She also has four books for children, a collection of essays, several volumes of short stories, as well as translations from two Indian languages into English to her credit. Her own novels and short stories have been translated into many Indian and European languages. She lives in Bangalore, India.

Drawn from the wondrous tales told to Kipling as a child by his Indian nurses, "Just So Stories" creates the magical enchantment of the dawn of the world, when animals could talk and think like people. Features an Introduction by Newbery Medalist Avi. Revised reissue.

Kipling has an Aesopian understanding of animals, of our dealings with them and our curious interrelatedness, interdependence, how we can learn about our own strange behaviour.

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.

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/How the Elephant got his Trunk
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