In “How the Rhinoceros got his Skin” the Parsee is interrupted in his cake-making by a grumpy and obstreperous smooth-skinned Rhinoceros who proceeds first to scare the Parsee up a tree and then to steal his cake, which is “all done brown and smelt most sentimental”. Illustrated by Niroot Puttapipat & published by the Folio Society. 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, our vanities and our foolishness, through them and through our relationship with them.

He takes us on an adventure to the wilds of Africa, sets his tale among a family of all kinds of animals, creates a world where they all grow up together in harmony – well, a sort of harmony, much like any human family…Children love these stories as well because of their extraordinary ingenuity and inventiveness. We feel he means it he’s at once on our side. Kipling talks to us like an uncle reading to us at bedtime, calls us “Best Beloved”. The stories are written “in an amusing grand style, peppered with long, and delightfully unlikely, invented words…Each story includes a short poem, and the first edition features Kipling’s own illustrations.” And as Michael Morpurgo, who has written the introduction to a wonderfully illustrated, limited collector’s edition of Just So Stories published by the Folio Society, notes in his review:įrom the start the story is intimately told. Kipling is said to have invented these stories as ingenious explanations of questions such as ‘How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin’ or ‘How the Leopard Got His Spots’ for his young daughters and their friends – to entertain them, and perhaps also to satisfy their curiosity at an age when children tend to ask ‘the many-why questions’.

While Joseph Rudyard Kipling is often remembered for his two Jungle Books and his poems, not many know that he also published a delightful collection of pourquoi stories titled, Just So Stories for Little Children.

Just so stories book