Explore the myriad and marvellous mysteries of the animal kingdom in this beautiful, collectable new Little Puffin Clothbound Classic.

‘The wildest of all the wild animals was the Cat. He walked by himself.'

From the heart-warming wiles of 'The Cat Who Walked by Himself' to the whimsical rhymes of 'How the Whale Got His Throat’, this Little Puffin Clothbound Classic collects the most lyrical, inventive and enchantingly funny of Kipling's animal allegories into a perfectly giftable hardback edition.

The Little Puffin Clothbound Classics collect some of the most beloved classic short stories for young readers into stunning, highly collectable small format editions. Bound in high-quality cloth with dazzling new foil-stamped designs, they're little enough to fit in a pocket and lovely enough to keep forever. Gift the best-loved classics to a new generation with Puffin’s gorgeously accessible Little Puffin Clothbound Classics collection.

Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay in India in 1865 to British parents, and brought up by a Portuguese ‘ayah’ (nanny) and an Indian servant, who would entertain him with fabulous stories and Indian nursery rhymes. He was sent back to England when he was seven years old, and lived in a boarding house with a couple who were cruelly strict. Fortunately he returned to India aged sixteen, to work as the assistant editor of a newspaper in Lahore. He began publishing stories and poems and eventually had great success with his book Plain Tales from the Hills. After his marriage Kipling settled in America, and it was here that he wrote The Jungle Book. He then moved with his family to England, where he wrote Just So Stories for his daughter Josephine who later tragically died of pneumonia. Rudyard Kipling was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907 and died on 18 January 1936.