A look at a few of the folktales given in this book by Rudyard Kipling.
Rudyard Kipling is known primarily for his tale "The Jungle Book". However, he has another book of nearly equal renown known as "Just So Stories". These are delightful tales that both answer those famous "why" questions every child loves to ask. As well as pass on morals in a most entertaining way. The majority of the stories written by Kipling are based out of India. This is where he grew up and spent quite a bit of time at. They have a very safari like feel to them.
My two favorite folk tales that are presented in this book are "How the Camel Got his Hump" and "How the Rhinoceros Got his Skin" These two stories are very interesting and have a very practical moral to their stories. In "How the Camel got his Hump" we learn that it is not good to be lazy and let everyone else do the work. In the story all the camel does is say "humph" when the Horse, the Dog and the Ox ask him to help them. This by the way occurred when the world was still new. The Djinn that was in charge of the dessert asked the Camel why he didn't work. All the camel said was "Humph". Since he said "Humph" so much the Djinn gave him a humph or as we say today a hump. This hump also made it possible that the camel could work for 3 days with out food or water. He still hasn't caught up with the work that he was behind on. Also according to the story the camel never got a better attitude either.
"How the Rhinoceros got his Skin", teaches us the importance of manner and not to eat food that has not been offered to us. The Rhinoceros stole cake from a Parsee, which is a native person who is an ancestor of the people of Persia. They immigrated to the west coast of India after the Muslim conquest to escape persecution. The English spell it Parsee and others spell it Parsi. Anyway, this Parsee was not very happy that the Rhinoceros not only stole his cake but also made a mess of his camp. So one hot day when everyone went down to the water. The Rhinoceros took off his skin (he had buttons on his belly that allowed him to do this) and got into the water. While he was in the water the Parsee took a bunch of cake crumbs that he had and rub them really good into the inside part of the Rhinoceros' skin. So when the Rhinoceros put his skin back on it was extremely itchy. Now up until this point he had a very lovely skin but after he got itchy he itched it so much and so badly that it got wrinkly and ruined (not to mention he lost his buttons!). This is how the Rhinoceros got the skin that we know of today.
