Chosen by Michael Morpurgo. Enchanting and funny, these fantastical stories of whales and cats, of kangaroos and crabs as well as many others, will take you on a journey to the boundaries of reality and beyond. With a superb introduction by Jonathan Stroud who tells us how he came to love these stories and why they remain so special in his mind. In this terrific pocket size Puffin edition there’s lots of additional material at the end of the book including an author profile, a guide to who’s who in the Just So Stories plus many activities beyond the book.
Just So Stories (with an Introduction by Jonathan Stroud) Synopsis
Presents the tales of whales and cats and kangaroos and crabs. This book includes stories ranging from how the camel got in a humph (and got his hump!) to how the alphabet was invented.
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.
