By Rudyard Kipling

About :
A rude and mean-spirited rhino gets special treatment in this short story by Rudyard Kipling. As with most of the Just So Stories, this one cries out for illustration. You might encourage your child to draw some pictures to go along with the story.

Excerpt:
Once upon a time, on an uninhabited island on the shores of the Red Sea, there lived a Parsee from whose hat the rays of the sun were reflected in more-than-oriental splendour. And the Parsee lived by the Red Sea with nothing but his hat and his knife and a cooking-stove of the kind that you must particularly never touch. And one day he took flour and water and currants and plums and sugar and things, and made himself one cake which was two feet across and three feet thick. It was indeed a Superior Comestible (that's magic), and he put it on stove because he was allowed to cook on the stove, and he baked it and he baked it till it was all done brown and smelt most sentimental. But just as he was going to eat it there came down to the beach from the Altogether Uninhabited Interior one Rhinoceros with a horn on his nose, two piggy eyes, and few manners.

Print "How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin" (4 pages)