Just So Stories discussion

This book is great. I'm only 11 and because it is dated it was sometimes hard for me to understand in some parts but it was still very good!

My personal favorite was 'How the Rhino Got It's Skin'
Although I really loved all of them

It's been one of my favorites since I was in grade school.

And, although dated, it is a blast to read aloud! 'How The Elephant Got His Trunk' especially.

MB wrote: "And, although dated, it is a blast to read aloud! 'How The Elephant Got His Trunk' especially."

that is also my faovourit and even when i tell it to my little sister of 5 she also enjoyed alot and believes it,s true

You mean it isn't? :)

I love the racism in this book!

Feliks wrote: "I love the racism in this book!"

How is there racism exactly? I see no racism in this book at all.

Haven't got a copy handy; but I believe there are both expurgated and unexpurgated versions which have always circulated. Which one did you read? You can easily discover essays and article's about Kipling's alleged racism all over the internet. I myself don't find it all that alarming; but that's just me. In any case, here's a link: http://reviews.rebeccareid.com/just-s...

stay far away from Kim then. that was hard to disregard. kind of like reading Huck Finn.

A pretty accurate depiction of what it was like to live during that period of the Raj, though.

Kim is very good, but the imperialism and imbalance of power is hard to overlook. Kim, an Indian child is enticed, awed, and rewarded into becoming a sort of super spy and saboteur to, in effect sell out his own country and give the British Raj even more power. If I remember right, it is hinted that he may be part British himself which makes it 'okay' i guess. But still disturbing when you look at it from 2013. It's been many years since I read, so I apologize if I remember plot in accurately.

I'm unwilling to go along with the idea that Kipling was a horrible man because he happened to live in a period when colonialism was still the way of the world. When I say, I 'love the racism' I mean that I love the corniness of the whole trite, hackneyed, racism faux-troversy. Make allowances for different timeperiods and for what we know of the constants of human psychology. This is how people lived.

Kim is not an Indian child. He is the son of an Irishman and an Indian woman. His last name is O'Hara.

I absolutely love the just so stories :) favourites being 'How the rhinoceros got his skin' and 'how the leopard got his spots'. Lovely for younger readers and to be read aloud to younger children. But as many have described in this thread, I think it's best to remember the world was a very different place then to what it is now , e.g colonialism. It is strange however, reading these stories as an adult as it becomes very apparent at just how different life is now.

I never read this as a child but I still enjoy them as I do Aesop's it's very clearly a child's story but not the sort of story that I think a adult would get bored with reading to a child. My copy had pictures and if Kipling actually drew them (as seems to be implied) - some of them are quite good.

I wouldn't hesitate in the slightest.

I think some of Kipling's books were illustrated by his father.

My very favourite is The Butterfly that Stamped. Only I`m afraid some might call it chauvinistic...
One thing I cannot understand is people calling books (or writers) names http://readaholicme.weebly.com/readah... . You do not like a book, OK, nobody can force you to read it, can they? And if that`s compulsory reading, well, you are free to state your opinion, but that should be more than just "racist", "chauvinist" and such, which is just spite, as often as not.

I am usually confused by such disliking comments mort often than not - as if being racist or chauvinistic isn't something you see in today's people and writing.

As well, what of the other side of it? It isn't as if the writings of other languages and people are all that hard to get whole of or read in English, what of their views to the same situations?

I can usually spot a comment that I count as racist or worse - sometimes deserved sometimes not - so it seems still strange that such words are used as if we were all one time and place and government and country and language upon it.

We are not and that's what makes this world worth living in some days for me, new views, new stories - how a hero to one side is a evil villain to another.

check this out:
http://www.bartleby.com/364/121.html

So, was Kipling a misogynist as well? What other stigmatizing labels can we paste on a dead man?

Feliks wrote: "What other stigmatizing labels can we paste on a dead man?"

It`s just plain spite. Spite and envy. I have not seen any of the ardent labellers to have written anything at least half as good as the writers they try to stigmatize.

I read Kipling, Burroughs, and Jack London when I was ten. When I read the books as an adult, I was surprised by the racial tone, I had no memory of it. So, I decided to skip over it like I did when I was a kid, now with a shake of the head for limited progress.