Just So Stories

This is one of the most imaginative, playful, writerly books I have ever read. And re-read. Twenty-nine year-old Kipling wrote this collection of twelve stories in collaboration with his young daughter, Josephine. It is a series of fantastical accounts of creation and re-creation within the animal kingdom. For instance, it explains: "in the "squoggy marshy country somewhere in Africa," and "on the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River," the elephant got its long trunk when a crocodile got hold of his original "bulgy nose."

I include this collection in the grand storytelling tradition of Fables Choisies and Aesop's Fables. And this particular edition is a gem because it includes the original illustrations, with which none other show more compare.

As a writer, if ever I run short on words or inspiration, I need only re-visit one of these stories and the ideas start gushing.

As a mother, I think this is one of the best books I ever read to my son. It shows children the value of words and artful play, and gives license to the unlimited scope of imagination. show less

This is one of those books you'd wish you'd read as a child...so you could, in turn, read to your OWN child. I would LOVE to have read this to PJ as a baby. The stories are enchanting and written very much as if Kipling were speaking to his own daughter, and each is more fascinating than the last, presenting fanciful explanations for commonplace questions, like, how the Camel got his hump. Or how the first letter was written. Or my favorite, what happened when the butterfly stamped his foot. Brilliant stuff, this, and it should be a part of every library...and on your list of books to read to YOUR child!

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I've never read Kipling, but I thought I had a pretty good idea of what to expect.

I'm not sure where I got that idea, because it was wrongwrongwrong. He is so ... flippant? Insouciant? Sassy?

This book was a delight to read, and as charming as it is, I was also surprised by its brutality. It's very subtle, but almost all these stories revolve around moments of terrible physical peril. This was most notable and most threatening in "How the First Letter Was Written" as we watch the little girl put the stranger in great jeopardy simply by drawing a few ambiguous pictures. In most of the other stories, the threat seems a little more innocent (possibly because it involves animals rather than people), but it's always there, looming.

Rudyard Kipling's collection of fairy tales and fables formed the majority of my childhood literary diet.
I can't tell you how much I was fascinated by his (maybe somewhat secondhand) myths of a primordial world, where men and animals competed and coexisted in more than one sense, where ancient untold wonders and unspoken secrets abound, and where a man helps his daughter design the English alphabet.
Don't let my rose-colored glasses fool you - it's really an amazing work. Stop reading this review and pick up a copy.

Wowzas! I can't remember a book that started out so delightful and deteriorated into such a mess of Imperialist racism and misogeny. The trouble starts when humans start appearing in the stories. Before that, the stylistic elements and amusing tales are wonderful.

En Los cuentos de así fue, la poderosa imaginación de Kipling atrapa al lector y lo sitúa ante un mundo mágico, fascinante a la vez que equilibrado. Pensando en sus jóvenes lectores, Kipling propone formas, actitudes y conductas adecuadas para desenvolverse en la vida. Y para que los jóvenes puedan integrarse en ese engranaje deben aprender de la astucia del marinero o de la que muestran el erizo y la tortuga; de la curiosidad del hijo del elefante y, como él, dejarse aconsejar por alguien más experimentado. Y deberán huir de la pereza, así como de la mala educación y también del orgullo desmedido.A la lectura deben añadirse las ilustraciones, obra del escritor, que introducen elementos y detalles que interesan vivamente a show more la imaginación infantil. Sus comentarios son las respuestas a las inquietudes que los niños, sus propios hijos y los que escuchaban estos cuentos, le planteaban show less

reading aloud in bed - the best way to experience these tales again - tuning down or out the intermittent imperial bigotry - always a Kipling flaw, the one "time...[pardons]" him for, according to Auden, because he writes well - and particularly well for children.