I apologize to my countless fans who were looking forward to another exciting installment of my review of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, but I must ask that you wait one more week. Unfortunately, I was unable to read enough of the book this week, and as a result, I didn’t have enough information to make up a blogg. However, as a time-filler, I present to you Just So Stories, a collection of short stories that explain the unknown.

Just So Stories was written by Rudyard Kipling in 1902. Each story offers an explanation as to why things are the way they are, like “How the Rhinoceros got his Skin,” or “How the Whale got his Throat.” What I like best about the stories is Kipling’s writing style. He sometimes makes up humorous names for animals or places, like the Limpopo River, or the ‘Stute Fish. Kipling also draws out repetition of adjectives to the extreme. At one point, Kipling uses this string of phrases to describe the Elephant Child: “and [he] went on, a little warm, but not at all astonished, eating melons, and throwing the rind about, because he could not pick it up…” The author makes sure to use this collection of adjectives every time the Elephant Child does something.

Just So Stories has great little poems in-between each short story. My favorite poem comes after “The Elephant’s Child”:

I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.

It is simple and short, yet so clever in the rhythm and the rhyming. What’s also neat is how they relate back to the story they are paired with. The one about the serving men named question words, like Who and What, connects to the Elephant Child, who is always asking questions.

By far my favorite story is “The Elephant’s Child.” In the High and Far-Off Times, all elephants had not long, thin trunks like they do now, but instead bulgy noses that they could only wiggle back and forth a bit. A new elephant, called the Elephant’s Child, “was full of ‘satiable curiosity.” He was always asking questions, and his elders disapprove and discipline him with a good spank or two. Finally, when he asks what the Crocodile eats, the Kolokolo Bird tells him he can find out if he goes to the Limpopo River. The young elephant finds the crocodile at the river, and the crocodile clamps down on his nose when the pachyderm gets too close. The Elephant Child pulls and pulls, and with the help from the Bi-Colored-Python-Rock-Snake, succeeds in escaping.

In the process, however, his trunk managed to get stretched out and is now long and thin. The Elephant Child finds that he can now slap away flies, easily eat grass, and slop mud on his back to keep cool. This short story reveals to us how the elephant got its long, thin trunk. What I find most amusing about this story is the amount of spanking that takes place. Yes, spanking. Apparently hitting one’s companion’s bottom is acceptable, and can be used as discipline or good luck. Once the Elephant Child receives his new trunk, he gets back at his older relatives by spanking each one of them very hard in turn. I guess jungle animals have it differently than humans; I don’t think I could go up to Mr. Bailey in school (or anywhere) and give him a spanking – not that I’d EVER want to. I find that to be entirely unnecessary and disrespectful on my part.