How the Just So Stories Were Made: The Brilliance and Tragedy Behind Kipling’s Celebrated Tales for Little Children

by John Batchelor

A fascinating, richly illustrated exploration of the poignant origins of Rudyard Kipling’s world-famous children’s classic

“In this concise and remarkable book . . . Batchelor guides us expertly . . . drawing on multiple sources and making intriguing connections between Kipling’s stories for children and for adults.”—John Carey, The Sunday Times 

From "How the Leopard Got Its Spots" to "The Elephant’s Child," Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories have delighted readers across the world for more than a century. In this original study, John Batchelor explores the artistry with which Kipling created the Just So Stories , using each tale as an entry point into the writer’s life and work—including the tragedy that shadows much of the volume, the death of his daughter Josephine.
 
Batchelor details the playful challenges the stories made to contemporary society. In his stories Kipling played with biblical and other stories of creation and imagined fantastical tales of animals' development and man's discovery of literacy.
 
Richly illustrated with original drawings and family photographs, this account reveals Kipling’s public and private lives—and sheds new light on a much-loved and tremendously influential classic.

Genres: Literary Criticism

240 pages, Hardcover

Published May 25, 2021

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Reviews

[Sid Nuncius · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed How The Just So Stories Were Made. It is interesting, readable and beautifully illustrated.

I was raised on the Just So Stories and The Jungle Books and have maintained an interest in Kipling all my reading life and I’m impressed with what John Batchelor has done here. He manages to interweave some fascinating references to influences on the Stories and their influence on others with biographical detail which is pertinent to the writing of the Stories themselves. A good deal of the biography was familiar to me, but there is much here that wasn’t and I found it all interesting in this context.

Batchelor’s analysis is well-informed and fair, I think. For example, he deals with racism elsewhere in Kipling’s writing, but also contrasts it with How The Leopard Got His Spots in which Kipling is “fully in accord with the Ethiopian.” These contradictions are a feature of Kipling’s work and it is good to see them acknowledged and analysed. (He also points out the clever and rather subversive way in which Kipling uses the verse from Jeremiah, “Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?” and the book is full of these insights.)

Many of the wonderful original illustrations from the book are reproduced here, along with other drawings by John Lockwood Kipling and photographs illustrating Kipling’s life. It is, quite rightly, rather scholarly in tone but it’s written in a very accessible way so, especially taken a couple of chapters at a time, I found it a rewarding read.

I think anyone who has ever read - or had read to them - the Just So Stories will enjoy this and get a great deal out of it. I can recommend it warmly.

(My thanks to Yale University Press for an ARC via NetGalley.)

[Rosemary Standeven · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved the ‘Just So Stories’ when I was a child – especially “The Elephant’s Child”. If I were ever to go to Africa and see the Limpopo river, and it were not the

“great grey-green, greasy Limpopo river, all set about with fever-trees”

then I would be “’scrutiatingly” disappointed (just as I was when I first saw the Danube and it wasn’t blue) – part of my childhood would have been forever lost. So, when I saw that a book about Rudyard Kipling and his ‘Just So Stories’ had been written, I leapt at the chance to read it. I wanted to know what his inspiration had been for these magical tales, and also what the man behind them had been like – particularly given the current climate of re-evaluating past heroes according to today’s social standards.
The book allots a chapter to each of the ‘Just So Stories’, describes what was going on in Kipling’s life when the tale was written, and also discusses the wonderful illustrations that Kipling drew to accompany the stories, and the side comments that went with them.
Kipling was born in India, where he was happy, and spoke Hindi as his first language. He was then sent back to England, for schooling, where he was exceedingly unhappy. He returned to India aged 16 to become a journalist and writer. Throughout his life he travelled extensively, living in USA, Africa and returning to England.
He seemed to be interested in meeting people of other cultures, and in learning of their cultures, and incorporated some of the knowledge that he gained into his stories. At the same time, he decried the pettiness of many of his fellow Brits. BUT, he somehow still believed that the British had an innate superiority and that it was their right to conquer, subjugate and rule the world. He even suggested that taking over China might be a good thing for both China and the British Empire. He was a close friend of Cecil Rhodes, and his views on colonialism and race became more extreme as he grew older, and particularly after the tragic death of his “Best Beloved” daughter, Josephine, for (or later in memory of) whom many of the ‘Just So Stories’ were written (because she liked things to be just so).
Childhood memory plays fast and loose with childhood literature. Both I and my husband, were absolutely certain that the phrase “pay heed and attend oh best beloved” , comes from the ‘Just So stories’, and indeed starts each story. It doesn’t. In fact, I could not find it anywhere in its entirety, though parts are scattered throughout. After reading ‘How the Just So Stories Were Made’, I went back to reread the ‘Just so Stories’ to see what else, I had misremembered, or missed entirely.
My childhood copy, I am sure, did not have all the illustrations – and certainly not the comments along side them. My current copy does, and is much more interesting because of it.
I also don’t remember all the spanking (especially in ‘The Elephant’s Child’) – not something that is acceptable today. The ‘right’ of white men to subjugate non-British peoples, women and all wild animals, would not have struck me as a child in reading these tales, but as an adult, is quite obvious. In ‘The Butterfly Who Stamped’, wives are put in their place – they should not argue with their husbands. However, in ‘The Cat that Walked by Himself’, women (specifically wives) are depicted as intelligent, and of equal status to men (albeit with different roles). This book claims that Kipling identified himself with the cat, and was very pleased to let his wife run the household and his life, so long as he could walk by himself when he felt he needed to.
Unlike the Victorian adage that ‘children should be seen and not heard’, in the ‘Just So Stories’ childhood curiosity is rewarded (‘The Elephant’s Child’), and children are listened to (‘How the First Letter was Written’ and ‘How the Alphabet was Made’) because they may have important ideas to communicate. Kipling clearly indulged his “Best Beloved” daughter Josephine, and modelled Taffy, “Small-person-without-any-manners-who-ought-to-be-spanked”, on her.
‘How the Just So Stories Were Made’ is a fascinating insight into an outstanding children’s classic. Kipling is a very flawed human being. For some of his failings, there are reasons given in this book. For others, there is no excuse, particularly for someone as intelligent and widely travelled as Kipling was. However, ‘The Just So Stories’ are a masterpiece of imagination and story-telling. Read aloud, they have a rhythm and poetry that has seldom been equalled. Take note of Kipling’s many deficiencies, but don’t ban or Bowdlerise his works – and do buy a complete illustrated copy of the ‘Jut So Stories’.
I received this copy from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own and not influenced by either the author or publisher.

[Debbie Baker · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was really looking forward to this but found it very disappointing. I enjoyed seeing some of the original illustrations and the discussion of their content and captions. But there was little content to the discussion of the tales and I found the biographical info to be kind of scattershot and not all that pertinent or interesting. No meat here. :(

[Hannah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed it for the most part, however I feel it should have been better than it was. I found it jumped around a lot between the Just So Stories and the biography side.