The Just So Stories for Little Children is among Kipling s best known and loved work. The stories focus on different animals, and how they got their distinctive features. You will for example discover why the elephant s trunk is so very long, and how the leopard got its spots. Written originally for his own daughter, the author s pleasure in playing with the sounds and meanings of words is very evident, and adds to the adults enjoyment of these children stories. This playfulness is also dramatically present in the plotting. For both reasons, these stories have been loved by generations of children and adults alike, and they are best enjoyed when read aloud.Joseph Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was an India-born British author, journalist, poet, and novelist. His most famous work is The Jungle Book (1894), which has inspired two Disney adaptations: the 1967 animated feature and the 2016 live-action film starring Scarlett Johansson, Bill Murray, and Lupita Nyong’o. In 1941, he became the first English-language writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
