A mistreated kitchen maid, with the help of her fairy godmother, attends the palace ball on the condition that she leave before midnight.

Retells the following Greek myths: "The Gorgon's Head, " "The Golden Touch, " "The Paradise of Children, " "The Three Golden Apples, " "The Miraculous Pitcher, " and "The Chimaera." Includes essays on Nathaniel Hawthorne and Walter Crane.

How did the whale get his throat? Why was the lazy camel lumbered with a hump? And how did the elephant's insatiable curiosity earn him a trunk? Kipling first invented these delightful stories about the beginning of the world and the first animals in it for his own daughter, Josephine, who tragically died when she was six. Devastated by her loss, Kipling compiled the stories they had shared together into a treasury, which was first published in 1902....