My Dad used to read me Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories before bedtime. They were stories that his Father read to him and his Father's Father had read to him. Every family has at least one tradition passed down, and this was ours.
If you're unfamiliar, Just So Stories were Pourquoi story (origin stories) which were fantastic accounts of how various phenomena came about. In Kipling's tales, they were how certain animals came to have certain attributes.
How the Elephant Got His Trunk was one I remembered in particular.
I had gotten a copy of it from my Grandmother ages ago which go lost over time. But I was very fortunate recently to find a similar print of the book (see cover above) she had gotten me. It was a 1978 publication of it, which would have probably been around the time she had gotten the book.
I had purchased a newer copy of it a few months back in a bookstore in Northampton MA. However, there is something a lot nicer about finding the very copy I remembered when I was young.
2 comments:
I highly recommend the Boris Karloff audio recording of Just So Stories -- he is quite good!
I heard there's also one with Jack Nicholson reading it.
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