An absolute treat – not just for youngsters
but for anyone who is young at heart. Worth every cent! (Review by Caroline
Smart)
Alex Latimer breathes new life into Rudyard
Kipling’s classic Just So Stories in
this new hardcover publication produced by Penguin Books.
The front cover features many of the
characters in the stories presented as if for a theatrical curtain call. Latimer’s
characters are all long-legged, even Slow-Solid Tortoise and Pau amma are
standing upright. The Whale towers above the others while Crocodile smirks
triumphantly as he perches on Whale’s Head.
There are major “bravos” here: for Rudyard
Kipling for creating his glorious Just So
Stories and their accompanying verses, in the first place, and for Alex
Latimer for giving them new life through his delightful illustrations.
Some of the stories include how the
Armadillo got its name when Stickly Prickly Hedgehog and Slow-Solid Tortoise
exchanged exteriors to avoid being eaten by young Jaguar. We get to meet young
Taffimai (Taffy) and enjoy her involvement in the creation of handwriting and
the alphabet.
Then there’s How the Camel got its Hump as well as stories that explain why the
Rhino is such a grumpy animal and The
Crab that Played with the Sea in which Kipling presents his idea of how the
tides were created.
While many are familiar with Kipling’s
classic phrase about the “great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River all set about
with fever trees“, he is also well-known for his inimitable descriptive style
of writing. These intriguing and whimsical stories about how animals look like
they do form a major challenge for those who read them aloud as they need to
get their tongues around complicated words or sets of words. There’s a voice
exercise challenge on every page!
Here are a few examples: “The really truly
twirly-whirly eel” ... “a great forest ‘sclusively full of trees and bushes and
stripy, speckly, patchy-blatchy shadows” ... “a new cool, sluishy-squishy
mud-cap” ... “the Leopard he was the ‘sclusivest sandiest-yellowest-brownest of
them all – a greyish-yellowish catty-shaped kind of beast” ... “the Bi-Coloured
Python-Rock-Snake with the scalesome, flailsome tail“ ... and so the delicious
descriptions continue.
Throughout the Just So Stories, Kipling uses the term “Best Beloved” and it is
believed that this refers to his beloved eldest daughter, Josephine, who died
at an early age from pneumonia.
Just
So Stories is published by Penguin Books and is an
absolute treat –not just for youngsters but for anyone who is young at heart.
ISBN: 9780143530992 Recommended Price R120. It’s worth every cent! – Caroline
Smart
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