@sozobe,
Quote:Yes of course! Elephant's child et al...
No, no...that's his "Just So" stories...which are wonderful.
And here they are online!
http://www.boop.org/jan/justso/
And, my favourite of course:
The Cat That Walked by Himself.
"THE CAT THAT WALKED BY HIMSELF
HEAR and attend and listen; for this befell and behappened and became and was, O my Best Beloved, when the Tame animals were wild. The Dog was wild, and the Horse was wild, and the Cow was wild, and the Sheep was wild, and the Pig was wild--as wild as wild could be--and they walked in the Wet Wild Woods by their wild lones. But the wildest of all the wild animals was the Cat. He walked by himself, and all places were alike to him.
Of course the Man was wild too. He was dreadfully wild. He didn't even begin to be tame till he met the Woman, and she told him that she did not like living in his wild ways. She picked out a nice dry Cave, instead of a heap of wet leaves, to lie down in; and she strewed clean sand on the floor; and she lit a nice fire of wood at the back of the Cave; and she hung a dried wild-horse skin, tail-down, across the opening of the Cave; and she said, 'Wipe you feet, dear, when you come in, and now we'll keep house.'
That night, Best Beloved, they ate wild sheep roasted on the hot stones, and flavoured with wild garlic and wild pepper; and wild duck stuffed with wild rice and wild fenugreek and wild coriander; and marrow-bones of wild oxen; and wild cherries, and wild grenadillas. Then the Man went to sleep in front of the fire ever so happy; but the Woman sat up, combing her hair. She took the bone of the shoulder of mutton--the big fat blade-bone--and she looked at the wonderful marks on it, and she threw more wood on the fire, and she made a Magic. She made the First Singing Magic in the world.
Out in the Wet Wild Woods all the wild animals gathered together where they could see the light of the fire a long way off, and they wondered what it meant........"
Continues here:
http://www.boop.org/jan/justso/cat.htm
With illustrations!!!!
Here's where you can have a look at The Jungle Books:
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rgs/jngl-table.html
You see, the copyright has expired.
Also...folkloric Kipling...Puck of Pook's Hill.
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rgs/puck-table.html
For a terrible old imperialist (he wrote the terrible "The White Man's Burden"
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/Kipling.html (apparently to try to get the US to develop the Phillipines!) he could do magic.....and his attitudes surely lead to some damn fine discussions.
If you are to "do" TH White...you MUST look at Mistress Masham's Repose...especially if she liked Gulliver's Travels:
http://able2know.org/topic/2848-1
There's something about it buried here, too:
http://able2know.org/topic/4541-1
BUT....no child's life can be complete without The Borrowers by Mary Norton.
This book (and its sequels) tell the story of a race of tiny people who live in the homes of Humans and live on what is available to be gathered.
It is a lovely and magical book....
Also, Alison Uttley's "A Traveller in Time".
A ravishing book about a girl who finds herself able to move between post-WW II and Elizabethan England.
