Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories is one of the best-loved story
collections ever written for children. In this companion to Volume I,
published in fall 2013, acclaimed children's book illustrator Ian
Wallace once again reinterprets the famous tales with luminous art,
bringing Kipling to a new generation of young readers.
Many of the tales are origin stories, explaining, for example, how an
animal came to be, or the how the alphabet and writing began. They all
display Kipling's vivid imagination, inventive vocabulary and engaging
word play. And once again Ian Wallace makes intriguing connections
between the stories in his richly imagined illustrations. The second
volume, as visually breathtaking as the first, includes "The Beginning
of the Armadilloes," "How the First Letter Was Written," "How the
Alphabet Was Made," The Crab That Played with the Sea," "The Cat That
Walked by Himself" and "The Butterfly That Stamped."
The first edition of Just So Stories was published in Great Britain in
1902, along with black-and-white illustrations by Kipling himself. The
stories have remained in print ever since, delighting young readers in
many countries. This new edition, published more than 110 years after
the original, has been edited to remove a few references now understood
to be offensive.
Inspired by these remarkable stories and the fact that they are set all
over the world, Ian Wallace has chosen to make an annual donation to the
International Board on Books for Young People's Fund for Children in
Crisis (www.ibby.org).
