The Just So Stories: Rudyard Kipling

These twelve magical stories tell, among other things, how the camel got his hump, the leopard his spots, the elephant his trunk, how the alphabet was made and how a butterfly caused mayhem at the court of King Solomon when he stamped. Charles Darwin might not have appreciated Kipling's distinctly odd view of the evolutionary process, but he would have been enchanted by the magic, the incantations, the language and Kipling's own illustrations that make "Just So Stories" one of the few enduring classics of children's literature.