Just So Stories for Little Children is a 1902 collection of origin stories by the British author Rudyard Kipling. Considered a classic of children's literature, the book is among Kipling's best known works.
Kipling began working on the book by telling the first three chapters as bedtime stories to his daughter Josephine. These had to be told "just so" (exactly in the words she was used to) or she would complain. The stories describe how one animal or another acquired its most distinctive features, such as how the leopard got his spots. For the book, Kipling illustrated the stories himself.
This collection includes the story of how the lazy camel found himself with a hump and how the insatiable curiosity of the elephant earned him his long trunk. It reveals how the whale was given a throat, and why every rhinoceros has great folds in his skin and a very bad temper. We also find out about the cunning cat that walked by itself, and how clever little Taffy and her Daddy Tegumai made the first alphabet. Rudyard Kipling first entertained his own children with these delightful, warm, and humorous stories, which he later wrote down for publication in 1902. Conjuring up distant lands and exotic jungles, they are bewitching for both children and adults.
Kipling began working on the book by telling the first three chapters as bedtime stories to his daughter Josephine. These had to be told "just so" (exactly in the words she was used to) or she would complain. The stories describe how one animal or another acquired its most distinctive features, such as how the leopard got his spots. For the book, Kipling illustrated the stories himself.
This collection includes the story of how the lazy camel found himself with a hump and how the insatiable curiosity of the elephant earned him his long trunk. It reveals how the whale was given a throat, and why every rhinoceros has great folds in his skin and a very bad temper. We also find out about the cunning cat that walked by itself, and how clever little Taffy and her Daddy Tegumai made the first alphabet. Rudyard Kipling first entertained his own children with these delightful, warm, and humorous stories, which he later wrote down for publication in 1902. Conjuring up distant lands and exotic jungles, they are bewitching for both children and adults.