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Rudyard Kipling
JUST SO STORIES (1902) Reviewed By Patrick Killough 1) biblio.com 04/03/2011 Would you recommend this book to other readers? Yes. * * * * * review: The original edition (1902) of Rudyard Kipling's yarns for children, JUST SO STORIES, has 12 tales. Some later editions added a 13th ("The Tabu Tale") and might have added a 14th from 1895, THE JUNGLE BOOK, on how the tiger got his stripes. Most of the stories are about animals, usually having one part of their anatomy being transformed by outside pressure ( e.g. a young elephant's puffy nose being stretched out to today's dimensions by a crocodile trying to drag the curious youngster for its dinner into "the great gray-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees"). But my favorite is about the domestication by earliest humans of the first wild animals: dog, horse and cat. It is called "The Cat That Walked by Himself." And the free-spirited cat was notable for negotiating, not entirely to his satisfaction, the anarchical terms under which he will consent to live with Man, Woman and Baby "for always and always and always." Standing far apart from the animal tales are two inter-twined yarns: -- "How the First Letter Was Written" and -- "How The Alphabet Was Made." Rooting the alphabet as we know it in a young cave girl's efforts to send a message home through a stranger speaking a different language but carrying with him an incomprehensible sketch she had drawn, Kipling makes learning the alphabet extra fun for youngsters and adds a bit of spoofing history as well. It is easy to imagine that the "O my Best Beloved" to whom Kipling later told the JUST SO STORIES was his oldest child, Vermont-born Josephine ("josie") who died of pneumonia at age six. -OOO- http://www.biblio.com/books/345779387.html =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (2) lunch.com 04/05/2011 name of review: "I will be kind to the baby ... for always and always and always." rating: * * * * * review: Just before I wrote this review for lunch.com, I went to wikipedia.org to refresh my memory. In the process I learned three new phrases describing JUST SO STORIES! A just so story is a pourquoi story aka origin story aka etiological tale. Wiki further defines the object of these phrases as "a fictional narrative that
explains why something is the way it is, for example why a snake has no
legs, or why a tiger has stripes. Many legends and folk
tales are pourquoi stories."
And indeed the 12 JUST SO STORIES are told to young children and are about origins, mainly of parts of animals but also origins of the alphabet and writing systems and, my favorite, of the domestication of the first animals by early humans. Rudyard Kipling published this collection in 1902, five years before he came the youngest person (age 42) even to this date to win the Nobel Prize for literature. The stories are for children. Some Rudyard had heard from his Indian servants as a toddler in Bombay in the late 1860s. Some if not all he seems to imagine himself telling his "Best Beloved" first child Josephine who died very young. Most of the animal stories are metamorphoses, not of, say, a pig into a mouse, but of a body part, a shape, a coloration into something else on or within the original animal. In the order presented the animals to be transformed are whale, camel, rhinoceros, leopard, young elephant, kangaroo, armadillo and crab. King Solomon makes peace among his 999 quareling wives with the help of two married butterflies. A curious elephant's pudgy nose is lengthened into a trunk by a hungry crocodile on the "banks of the great gray-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees." A well-meaning cave girl causes a lot of trouble when she invents the first pictographic writing. And on and on. Cat lovers everywhere cannot get enough of "The Cat That Walked by Himself." There was a time when every animal in the world was wild. Even the Man was wild until he met the Woman. The aroma of the first meal that the Woman cooked in the couple's neat cave drew the wild dog and the wild horse to the cave, where they agreed to become Man's First Friends. The wild cat was tempted but only observed from hiding how the Man and the Woman and later the Baby related themselves to those wild animals which they tamed. Cat's unvarying slogan was "I am the cat who walks by himself, and all places are alike to me." And on the basis of that feline Ur-value, Cat negotiated terms useful to himself (including thrice daily milk) first with the Woman, then the Man. Dog then demanded that Cat be kind to the baby, or else. Cat: "I
will be kind to the baby while I am in the Cave, as long as he does not
pull my tail too hard, for always and always and always. But
still I am the Cat that walks by himself, and all places are alike to
me."
Cat's relationship with humans is unique and not as placid as man's relations with dogs, horses, cows and sheep. Men will throw their boots. And dogs will chase cats up a tree. A grand tale "for always and always and always." -OOO- http://www.lunch.com/ubergizmo/reviews/book/UserReview-Just_So_Stories _Signet_Classic_-64-1589889-205168-_I_will_be_kind_to_the_baby_f or_always_and.html =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (3) bn.com 04/05/2011 title of review: "Daddy's left ear -- the one that belonged to her to pull when she was good" rating: * * * * * review: A wee Neolithic Cave Girl trying her best to help Daddy had a hand in two great inventions: pictographic writing and the phonetic alphabet. Read all about it in Rudyard Kipling's 12 JUST SO STORIES of 1902. Daddy was named Tegumai Bopsulai and he lived "cavily in a Cave" with wife Teshumai Twindrow and small daughter Taffimai Metallumai (meaning "Small-person-without-any-manners-who-ought-to-be-spanked"). Call her Taffy. She was her parents' Best Beloved "and was not spanked half as much as was good for her." One day Teshumai took a spear and went fishing in the Wagai river. Spearing carp-fish for dinner was the goal and Taffy came along. Daddy shatteredhis spear on the hard river bottom. Taffy then drew a picture, clear to her but to no one else, and persuaded a wandering adult man who spoke another language to bring it to the Cave and fetch back more fishing spears. Despite all the hullabaloo and misunderstandings, Taffy had written the first letter. Next, Taffy and Daddy cooperated to create a phonetic alphabet based on pictograms. And they had so much fun doing it that Taffy felt it was safe to run "down to the river" and "pull her Daddy's left ear -- the one that belonged to her to pull when she was good." And to this day children have fun learning their alphabet the Taffy way. Most of the other ten JUST SO STORIES are tongue in cheek yarns about how a variety of animals including whale, camel, rhinoceros, leopard, young elephant, kangaroo, armadillo and crab had various changes made to their anatomy while interacting with their environment. A favorite tale is of the anarchically-minded, what's-in-it-for-me Cat negotiating his way into a precarious relationship in a time much before Taffy's with the Man, the Woman and the Baby. Cat would never be as unquestioningly devoted and caring as Dog and Horse but he made a place for himself among mankind. But "... when the moon gets
up and night comes, he is the Cat that walks by himself, and all places
are alike to him."
I suspect that both children and parents will be happily reading JUST SO STORIES "for always and always and always." -OOO- recommended reading: -- Rudyard Kipling - KIM, THE JUNGLE BOOKS -- Lewis Carroll - ALICE IN WONDERLAND http://my.barnesandnoble.com/communityportal/ review.aspx?reviewid=1612631 =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (4) amazon.com 04/06/2011 title of review: A young jaguar's confusing of hedgehog and tortoise created armadillo rating: * * * * * review: There are 12 stories of "origins" in Rudyard Kipling's 1902 JUST SO STORIES. Here is the plot of one of the more complicated yarns, "The Beginnings of the Armadillos." Speaking to his Best Beloved young daughter Josephine, Kipling tells of "the High and Far-Off Times ... on the banks of the turbid Amazon." Two friends lived along the same stretch of river: Stickly-Prickly Hedgehog and Slow-Solid Tortoise. Nearby lived young, naive Painted Jaguar "and he ate everything that he could catch." Mother Jaguar advised her son how to eat his two neighbors: drop Hedgehog into water and make him uncoil; scoop Tortoise out of his shell with a paw. When Painted Jaguar came upon them one beautiful night, both creatures went into their defensive postures. In the dark, Painted Jaguar could not tell which was Hedgehog and which was Tortoise. So he asked them to identify themselves, having first let slip the tecnhique that Mother Jaguar had recommended for eating them. The two friends so confused Painted Jaguar that he filled his paws with Hedgehog's quills and let Tortoise swim away to safety. Mother Jaguar then taught him how to tell the friends apart. But meanwhile Hedgehog has received swimming lessons from Tortoise. And Tortoise has learned to loosen his back plates and bend a bit. In the process the two friends have grown to look much alike. Painted Jaguar can no longer tell them apart and tells Mother Jaguar that there is a new beast in the forest. She advises: call it Armadillo till you find its real name, and leave it alone! The story ends in twenty lines of verse which I taught myself to sing around age 10 in Shreveport from listening to a 33 RPM record of "Kipling Songs." If he ever wants to see a Jaguar or an Armadillo, the poet will have to roll down to Rio "These wonders to behold." "Oh, I'd love to roll to Rio
Someday before I'm old!" And so would I, O Best Beloved. Meanwhile I console myself with the eleven other JUST SO STORIES about whale, camel, rhinoceros, leopard, young elephant, kangaroo and crab and two tales of how cave girl Taffy invented pictographic writing, mailed the first letter and, with her kindly father, invented the phonetic alphabet. -OOO- http://www.amazon.com/Just-So-Stories-Rudyard-Kipling/ dp/0451531507/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid= 1298925608&sr=1-5 =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (5) epinions.com 04/05/2011 Review Title: The Butterfly That Stamped by aohcapablanca, Apr 06 '11 The version before me of Rudyard Kipling's JUST SO STORIES contains 12 of them. Later a 13th was added in some editions. And apparently a 14th (how the tiger acquired its stripes) sometimes, albeit rarely, appears in the collection, although written before the original 1902 publication date. "My" 12 are mainly imaginative tall tales of metamorphoses of animals: not so much holistic shape changes from one species to an entirely new one (but see "The Beginning of the Armadillos"), no, instead they are mere changes in colors or shapes of body parts (the elephant's pursy, puffy nose into an elongated trunk). These are said to be "origin" stories, etiological narratives, pourquoi tales. In two consecutive narratives we learn how a young cave girl named Taffy invented pictograph writing, posted the first letter and then, with lots of help from Daddy, created the first phonetic alphabet. We learn how, long, long before Taffy, the Man, the Woman and their Baby influenced the taming of the first wild animals, notably of Dog and of Horse, but also, via an exceptional feat of feline negotiation, of "the Cat that walks by himself, and all places are alike to him." Verses are associated with these prose stories for children (the addressee,"O Best Beloved," is probably Kipling's young daughter Josephine). And as in KIM and elsewhere, Kipling organizes his Capital Letters and marches them, drums drumming, pipes piping, to War. For a bit more flavor of Rudyard Kipling's writing, I invite your attention to the final of the 12 JUST SO STORIES, "The Butterfly That Stamped." It begins: "This, O my Best
Beloved, is a story -- a new and wonderful story -- a story quite
different from the other stories -- a story about The Most Wise
Sovereign Suleiman-bin-Daoud -- Solomon the Son of David. ... It is the story of the Butterfly that
Stamped."
At once we feel that we are in the Arabian Nights. King Suleiman was vastly wise "and Balkis, his Head Queen, the Most Beautiful Queen Balkis, was nearly as wise as he was." Suleiman wore a magic ring that could summon djinns and angels. "He married ever so many wives. He married nine hundred and ninety-nine wives, besides the Most Beautiful Balkis." They all lived in one golden palace. Balkis alone among the wives never quarreled with King Suleiman. Most of the rest made His Majesty miserable. And how they quarreled among themselves, once for three weeks without end! Suleiman-bin-Daoud told Balkis that he saw no way out for himself: he had to endure the other wives' incessant bickering. Then one day in his garden the great king overheard two butterflies. The male boasted that if he merely stamped his foot, the king's palace would disappear. Suleiman-bin-Daoud laughed and asked the male why he had lied so. Said the Butterfly: "O King, live forever. She is my wife; and you know what wives are like." He had boasted simply to frighten his wife into ending her incessant nagging. Overhearing this exercise in male bonding, Head Queen Balkis quickly thought of a way to end the bickering of her master's 999 other wives. She then approached the female butterfly. And between them, girl to girl, they wisely worked out a very happy ending, which I will not spoil for you, O Best Beloved readers of epinions! "There was never a Queen like Balkis,
From here to the wide world's end; But Balkis talked to a butterfly As you would talk to a man." Millions, young and old, have enjoyed JUST SO STORIES. Let him or her who scorns Kiplingese and thinks that he or she could pen better tales, please do so. And your humble servant, AOH-bin-CAPABLANCA, shall happily review them. -OOO- Pros: Children love animal stories. Learn the phonetic alphabet the way prehistoric Taffy created it. Cons: Some verses at the end of the prose "origin stories" are a bit flat. The Bottom Line: Memorable phrases like "the great gray-green greasy Limpopo River." Verses famously set to song such as "Oh, I'd love to roll to Rio/ Someday before I'm old." Grand yarns. Overall Product Rating: * * * * * http://www0.epinions.com/specs/Just_So_Stories_by_Rudyard_Kipling_and_by_Peter_Levi _and_edited_by_Peter_Levi_and_by_Meg_Rutherford_and_by_Robert_Mathais_and_by_ Copyright_Paperback_Collection_Library_of_Congress_and_illustrated_by_Barry_Moser_ and_Janet_Taylor_Lisle_and_narrated_by_ =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= http://www.patrickkillough.com/books/kipling_justso.html |