Just So Stories

Rudyard Kipling

Just So Stories — Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling, first published in 1902, is now considered to be a classic of children’s literature. The collection contains twelve humorous tales. Many offer fanciful explanations of how animals gained their distinctive features; others concern writing or natural phenomena. For example, “The Elephant’s Child” tells how the elephant gained its long trunk because of a baby elephant having its nose pulled and stretched by a crocodile. The stories originated as bedtime tales Kipling invented for his daughter and told to her each night. The stories had to be told in exactly the same words each night—“just so”—or his daughter would complain.