How The Elephant’s Child Who Walked By Himself Got His Wings by Peter Eastman
The stories in this piece of interactive fiction are based on Kipling’s Just So stories. Not having read them, I couldn’t really compare How The Elephant’s Child Who Walked By Himself Got His Wings with the original… but since Kipling is freely available here, and since the stories are very short, I read two of them just now.
Wow. Do I prefer Eastman to Kipling. It’s altogether too trying-hard-to-be-cute, too laborious in its whimsicality, too moralistic in its supposedly carefree inventiveness. Yes, as Eastman justly remarks, the poetry is bad. But I’m not sure the prose is much better.
How The Elephant’s Child Who Walked By Himself Got His Wings, on the other hand, is whimsical but with just the right amount of narrative logic; carefree with just the right amount of seriousness; and cute without trying. Very enjoyable.