HERE'S HOW I CAME TO LOVE the Just So Stories. Most nights when I was small, my mother read to me at bedtime. My father did so rarely, and when he did it was a notable event. I would be on my best behaviour, lying quiet as I could (I was a wriggly child), while he brought out a book that had been his favourite as a boy. This was the Just So Stories, and it soon became a shared delight between us. I lay silent in the half-dark, listening to my dad's voice as he carried me to far-off places and far-off times, back near the beginning of the world.

The tales explain how things began. They are comical accounts, and my father told them all with gusto. So I would close my eyes and grin as he related how the Leopard got his spots and the Camel got his hump; I would chuckle (a little uncomfortably) at the scritchy, itchy tale of how the Rhinoceros got his skin. And best of all - by far the best - I would squirm with delight at the wicked escapades of the Elephant's Child, one of the funniest stories ever written.

Each tale is full of marvels, but the real magic in them is their language, which explodes like fireworks in your ears. It thrums with a uniquely twirly dancing rhythm that sweeps you up like a magic carpet; it is crammed with sensuous lists of remote, exotic places that conjure the wonders of the wide, wide world. And it is packed with beautiful phrases you will find nowhere else, though you read a thousand books. Where else can you visit “the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees”, or meet the Cat that Walked by Himself, “waving his wild tail and walking by his wild lone”? It is like listening to the chanting of a spell.

The power of this spell is strongest when spoken aloud. The Just So Stories are intimate and playful, made for sharing. They began as stories told to Kipling's daughter, Josephine, and the fun he had is evident in the way he messes about with words, altering them, compressing them, making up new ones. He fills the pictures (which he drew) with hidden codes and pictograms (the image of Noah's Ark occurs often, placed within an “A”: this is “ark-A”, or “RK” - Kipling's initials) and adds long captions stuffed with extra jokes.

There is a hidden sadness in the book as well. Josephine died when she was only six, and Kipling recalls her in the Taffy stories and poems, about a cave-girl and her father who work together to invent writing. Of course, Kipling cannot truly recover his daughter - there is a limit to the potency of words - but he can fix their love so that it is remembered always. Shared things have that power. We can share it too. Thirty years on, when I scan the tales again, I can still hear my dad reading them, and that's a kind of magic in itself. It's your choice how you experience Kipling's enchantment, but whether you read the Just So Stories alone or listen to them recited in a quiet room, his spell will work. Sit back and let the words carry you away.

Introduction to the Puffin Classics edition of Just So Stories © Jonathan Stroud 2008

Jonathan Stroudwrote The Bartimaeus Trilogy, starring a djinni and a young magician

Factfile

Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay in

1865, when India was under British rule. He lived there until the

age of 6, after which he was sent to a foster home in England.

He returned to India as an adult and spent seven years working as a journalist, scouring the country for news stories.

The Just So Stories - developed from tales that Kipling made up and told to his daughter Josephine at bedtime - were published in 1902.

Kipling's most famous work is The Jungle Book. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907, but he declined an offer to become the Poet Laureate.

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