Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English journalist, short-story writer, poet, and novelist. In 1907, at the age of 41, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, making him the first English-language writer to receive the prize and its youngest recipient to date. The size and speed of his success was an event in itself. He enjoyed profound popularity with the English-speaking public through the 1890s and a cultural stature that may have been unequalled, then or since. By 1892 he had created a remarkably wide-ranging literary landscape of British India. Over the next ten years, he would create some of the classic works of children’s literature, such as The Jungle Books and the Just So Stories. How The Leopard Got His Spots is one of the wonderful Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling. The Leopard used to live on the sandy-coloured High Veldt. He too was sandy-coloured, and so was hard for prey animals like Giraffe and Zebra to see when he lay in wait for them. The Ethiopian lived there too and was similarly coloured. He, with his bow and arrows, used to hunt with the Leopard. Then the prey animals left the High Veldt to live in a forest and grew blotches, stripes and other forms of camouflage. The Leopard and the Ethiopian were hungry and consulted Baviaan, the wise baboon, who said the prey animals had “gone into other spots” and advised them to do the same. You can listen online to free English audiobook “How The Leopard Got His Spots” by Rudyard Kipling on our website.
