A favourite of June 2011 Guest Editor Michael Morpurgo, whoremembers this as: "The story my mother used to read me most often, because I asked for it again and again. I loved the sheer fun of it, the music and the rhythm of the words. It was subversive too. Still my favourite story, and this was part of the inspiration for my recent novel Running Wild which is also about an elephant."
The tale of how the elephant got its trunk is one of the most beloved of the Just So Stories Rudyard Kipling wrote for children. The insatiably curious elephant's child peppers every animal he meets with questions about the mysterious crocodile who lives on the banks of the Lompopo River. When he finally meets the crocodile, he nearly becomes dinner. This rollicking story and Jonas's Laustroer's vibrant art have the makings of a modern classic.
With vibrant illustrations, the text has been abridged for a younger audience. Headteacher
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.
