Just So Stories (Chrysalis Children's Classics Series)

Rating:
Summary: Great children's stories in my favorite story-telling style
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed Kipling's collection of light-hearted children's stories.

They have exactly the "come here and sit on my knee, and I'll tell you a story" quality that I like best in young children's story-telling, and the stories are written in such a way as to make you feel you are sitting on Kipling's other knee as he reads them to his Best Beloved. You are part of something private between a father and his daughter in these stories, but, while there are a few private jokes taken directly from their lives, these do not lessen the enjoyment of the story.

An example, taken from my favorite story in the collection, `How the Whale Got His Throat,' occurs after the whale has swallowed a sailor, and the sailor has said he will stomp around the whale's insides until the whale to take him back home to England.

Quote:
So the whale swam and swam and swam, with both flippers and his tail, as hard as he could...and at last he saw the Mariner's natal-shore and the white-cliffs-of-Albion, and he rushed half-way up the beach, and opened his mouth wide and wide and wide, and said, "Change here for Winchester, Ashuelot, Nashua, Keene, and stations on the Fitchburg Road."
*****

This obviously is something plucked from the life of Kipling and his little girl, so it was funny to them for this additional reason; the rest of us (including my daughter and I) still can be content with a whale doing something extraordinarily silly.

Many, or most, of the stories are laced with characters and legends from India, the land of Kipling's birth, and, whether they were borrowed from Indian mythology or were created entirely by Kipling, these carried an interesting, exotic air, which I am beginning to believe I am supposed to find characteristic of Kipling. Only one of the stories, `How the Alphabet Was Made,' really dragged a bit, but even that one was all right. It was followed, though, by an exceptionally sad moment, in which Kipling writes a heart-wrenching (at least to someone with two little girls of his own) lament for his beloved daughter, who, I remember, died quite young. He uses the characters Tegumai (the father) and Taffy (the daughter), who represent Kipling and his daughter, from the Alphabet story:

Quote:
Of all the Tribes of Tegumai
Who cut that figure, none remain-
On Merrow Downs the cuckoos cry-
The silence and the sun remain.

But as the faithful years return
And hearts unwounded sing again
Comes Taffy dancing through the fern
To lead the Surrey spring again.

Her brows are bound with bracken-fronds,
And golden elf-locks fly above;
Her eyes are bright as diamonds
And bluer than the sky above.

In mocassins and deer-skin cloak,
Unfearing, free and fair she flits,
And lights her little damp-wood smoke
To show her Daddy where she flits.

For far-oh, very far behind,
So far she cannot call to him
Comes Tegumai alone to find
The daughter that was all to him.
*****
I sat staring at that page for minutes on end on more than one occasion, I don't mind telling you.

I'm sure I'm the last person on the planet to have read this, so a recommendation isn't necessary. I will only say that some of the stories, at least, still can be enjoyed by modern children (and adults), judging by my daughter's "can we read the whale story again...and again...and again?" I hope that Just So Stories aren't lost over time, and I hope parents will continue to read them to their own Best Beloveds as years go by.

Rating:
Summary: Sly narrator may make this a "best beloved" book
Review: This is a collection of twelve stories originally published between 1897 and 1902. Kipling uses the beast fable as a jumping-off point to tell inventive stories set in exotic locales and eras, such as the traditionally themed "How the Leopard Got His Spots" and the more ingenious "The Cat that Walked by Himself." Less interested in conveying a moral than in amusing his readers, Kipling tells his stories with a warm and endearing narrator, who frequently directly addresses the young reader as "Best Beloved" and often notes the hopelessness of understanding grown-ups. The tone of the stories is further enhanced with the inclusion of Kipling's small pen and ink drawings, wittily captioned with commentary about the inadequacy of the drawings and including utterly irrelevant, but entertaining asides. The stories possess a joy in the sound of words, with language that begs to be read out-loud. Though the vocabulary may be difficult and foreign for some readers, it will likely be overlooked and overcome as part of Kipling's fantasy world. The rhythmic language and the fantastical themes combined with length of the stories (ranging from 10-30 pages) lend themselves to bedtime reading. More than a century old, the stories have a timeless feel, though the original edition does include some outdated and potentially offensive references to race and gender, which may require some explanation by adults. Overall, these stories will appeal to young children absorbed with the "whys" of life at the same time that older children will enjoy the sly chumminess of the narrator.