Just So Stories

Just So Stories is a collection of Rudyard Kipling's animal tales in which we learn about '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 Armadilloes', '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'. These witty, inventive stories have delighted generations of children.

About the Author

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was named after the Staffordshire reservoir near Leek beside which his parents became engaged. He was born in India and spent the first six years of his life there, acquiring Hindustani as a second language and living in a bungalow like that in The Jungle Book. He was then sent to a boarding house in England with his sister Alice, where he had a miserable time until he was sent to the United Services College at Westward Ho! in Devon, the model for Stalky & Co. He left school at sixteen to return to India and work on the Civil and Military Gazette in Lahore, and his familiarity with all classes of society provided him with material for "Barrack-Room Ballads" and "Plain Tales from the Hills". In 1889 he returned to England and in 1891 published his novel The Light That Failed, and married Caroline (Carrie) Balestier the following year. They returned to her home, Brattleboro, Vermont, where Kipling wrote the two Jungle Books and Captains Courageous. In 1896 the family returned to England, where Kipling continued to write prolifically and was the first Englishman to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907. His later years were darkened by the death of his son, John, at the Battle of Loos in 1915.