GOOD-NIGHT STORIES

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 1, 2 January 1937, Page 3 (Supplement)

GOOD-NIGHT STORIES

An elephant was sitting by the side of a In ke A-talking to its friend the snake. When along came a bad-mannered little monk And made fun of the elephant's trunk. At this the poor elephant blushed for shame And its friend the snake did just the same. Now wasn't that a naughtv monk To make such fun of au elephant's trunk? —Shadow Saying. Mij, Flor, Hanid, Yam and Knarf— the shadow-children with the turnedabout names—were getting more and more frightened. You would, too, if all around you there began to gather lions, tigers, elephants, kangaroos, snakes, hippos and a hundred more different animals "from the zoo" as Mij wisely pointed out. Only these animals weren't from any zoo. They were all from the jungle. It wasn't exactly the ordinary kind of jungle either. The shadows had squeezed themselves inside a book entitled the "Jungle Book." The moment they got inside they found themselves in a thick jungle. Then they met Mowgli, the jungle boy, who told them he was going to introduce them to a few of his friends. Mowgli was dark-skinned and he knew the language of all the animals, so that not long after he started calling them they began to gather about from all sides. "Hey, there, don't get so close to me, plea-se," Knarf said to a huge rhinoceros that seemed as though it would like to rest its chin on Knarf'a

shoulder. Mowgli ordered the rhinoceros to go back a bit. "Don't be frightened," he assured the shadowboy; he doesn't mean to be impolite. Me just doesn't know any better." „ "} wou hln't mind," Knarf replied, only its chin is so heavy. It weighs a ton." At this the rhinoceros snorted vnth rage. "It only weighs half a ton!" Knarf hastily apologised, for he didn't care to hurt its feelings.

At this moment the elephant said "What are we all here for, Mowgli?" "I've asked you all to come here because I want to present to you my new friends, the shadow-children—and also the tin-soldier," Mowgli added, pointing to the tin-soldier who had come along with the-shadows to protect them with his gun. "What are their names, Mowgli!" the tiger and a strange animal that looked like a deer with a corkscrew on its head demanded. "Their names are Mij, Flor, Hanid " The jungle-boy could get no farther, for all the animals cried out: "What curious names!" "Not curious at all," Hanid broke in. "They're simply the names of our masters and mistresses spelled backwards. I don't see anything so curious about that. Your names are curious, too, if you want to think about them in that way." "They're not curious at all. They're the best names in the world," the chimpanzee cried.

"That's right," shouted the others— or I should say howled and screeched and roared and bellowed, for few of them could really shout. But they were all very angry. They didn't like the idea of a few shadows—and what were shadows anyway? —coming into their jungle and criticising their names, which they had borne for years and years and years. And I don't know what terrible thing might have happened to the shadows if one of the real-children (I think it was Hanid's mistress Dinah), hadn't come along at this moment and picked up the "Jungle Bodk" at which all five shadows promptly fell out of the jungle and were quits saved 1 That's the benefit of a book jungle over a real one.