Rudyard Kipling’s classic stories are beautifully presented in this highly attractive edition enhanced with eight stunning colour illustrations by Chris Riddell as well as by Kipling’s own illustrations – including his most famous one of The Elephant’s Child. Kipling’s versions of how different animals have come by their characteristic- How the Leopard Got his Spots, How the Whale Got His Throat, The Cat that Walked By Itself and the others remains one of the best books to read aloud to any one from 5 upwards.
'Hear and attend and listen; for this befell and behappened and became and was'
Have you ever enquired why the elephant has such an enormously elongated nose? Are you confused by a cat's contrary nature? Have you ruminated on the wrinkles of a rhinocerous? Or speculated on a leopard's spots? Rudyard Kipling wondered about all these things too, and in this marvellous collection of stories he imagines how the animals became 'just so'.
Includes exclusive material: In the Backstory you can find out why Just So Stories is one of Philip Pullman's favourite books and discover wacky facts about wild animals!
Vintage Children's Classics is a twenty-first century classics list aimed at 8-12 year olds and the adults in their lives. Discover timeless favourites from The Jungle Book and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland to modern classics such as The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.
Just So Stories was the first book I ever truly loved Michael Morpurgo
Author
About Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay in 1865. He was educated in England but returned to India as an adult and worked as a journalist. There, he produced stories, sketches and poems that made him a literary celebrity when he returned to England in 1888. After their marriage, Kipling and his wife moved to Vermont, where he wrote The Jungle Book. Published in 1894, it became a children's classic all over the world. Tales of every kind, including historical and science fiction, continued to flow from his pen, including Kim (1901) and the Just So Stories (1902). From 1902 Kipling made his home in Sussex, but continued to travel widely and caught his first glimpse of warfare in South Africa, where he reported in the Boer War. Kipling was the recipient of many honorary degrees and other awards. He was the first writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize, in 1907, and in 1926 he received the Gold Medal of the royal Society of Literature. Kipling died in 1936.
