I love Kipling. I love his Jungle Books (Rikki Tikki Tavi the brave mongoose is my hero), his poetry, and these - the 'Just so' stories - so called because they are 'Just So'. This is a collection of whimsical animal stories for small children and are delightful.

Kipling falls in and out of fashion, his name forever associated with the British Empire and "jingoism." Yet his poetry (The Power of the Dog) and his books (The Man who would be King) deserve to be judged on their own merits. Autobiographies of this man portray a sensitive loving husband and father who loved words and displayed a fine sense of humour. Kipling's own life was not without tragedy, he famously pulled strings for his teenage son to join the British Army in Flanders, although 'Jack' Kipling was almost blind without his glasses. Within a week Kipling's son was dead, resulting in Kipling's famous lines: "And if they ask you why we died/tell them that our fathers lied."
From his children's stories, to novels to poetry, Kipling writes with a simplistic genius which still has the power to entertain, and I've chosen to pick out the 'Just So' stories simply because my Daddy loved them too.