Just So Stories, Hardcover

Designed to appeal to the book lover, the Macmillan Collector's Library is a series of beautifully bound pocket-sized gift editions of much loved classic titles. Bound in real cloth, printed on high quality paper, and featuring ribbon markers and gilt edges, Macmillan Collector's Library are books to love and treasure.

These twelve magical tales tell, among other things, how the camel got his hump, the leopard his spots, the elephant his trunk, how the alphabet was made and how a butterfly caused mayhem at the court of King Solomon when he stamped. The Just So Stories are one of the enduring classics of children's literature, not only for their wit, enchantment and language but also for Kipling's own illustrations.

With an Afterword by Marcus Clapham

Stories in this edition:
How the Whale Got His Throat
How the Camel Got His Hump
How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin
How the Leopard Got His Spots
The Elephant's Child/How the Elephant got his Trunk
The Sing-Song of Old Man Kangaroo
The Beginning of the Armadillos
How the First Letter Was Written
How the Alphabet Was Made
The Crab That Played with the Sea
The Cat That Walked by Himself
The Butterfly That Stamped

About the Author:

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was named after the Staffordshire reservoir near Leek beside which his parents became engaged. He was born in India, and spent the first six years of his life there, acquiring Hindustani as a second language and living in a bungalow like that in The Jungle Book. He was then sent to a boarding house in England with his sister Alice, where he had a miserable time until he was sent to The United Services College at Westward Ho! in Devon, the model for Stalky & Co. He left school at sixteen to return to India and work on The Civil and Military Gazette in Lahore, and his familiarity with all classes of society provided him with material for Barrack Room Ballads and Plain Tales from the Hills. In 1889 he returned to England and in 1891 published his novel The Light That Failed, and married Caroline (Carrie) Balestier the following year. They returned to her home Brattleboro, Vermont, where Kipling wrote the two Jungle Books and Captains Courageous. In 1896 the family returned to England, where Kipling continued to write prolifically, and was the first Englishman to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907. He later years were darkened by the death of his son John at the Battle of Loos in 1915.