Kiplings JUST SO STORIES certainly rank in English-speaking childrens literature right along with A. A. Milnes WINNIE THE POOH and Kenneth Grahames WIND IN THE WILLOWS. They are fun to read to children 4-8, and even MORE fun for them to read for themselves at ages 7-11 (theyre marvelous vocabulary builders –the mariner of infinite resource and sagacity). My English-raised mother heard the stories when they were new and read them to me when I was a child, I read them to my own children, they read them to theirs, and I believe that same cycle has been repeated among millions of families since the stories appeared at the beginning of the 20th century. <p> Rudyard Kipling was the first English writer to win the Nobel Prize (not the Pulitzer) for literature, in 1907. He was staunchly pro-Empire in an era in which Great Britain not only ruled the waves, but a third of the globe – the sun never set, it was said, on the British Empire, of which he sang in hundreds of poems and short stories and novels which also deserve reading today. <p> But imperial/colonialist notes are hard to hear in the JUST SO STORIES, which Kipling wrote for the amusement of a young niece. The stories are meant for FUN, and all children deserve to have some. Get this book; read it yourself if you havent already – and then read it to the youngsters for whom Kipling intended it.
