Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling

First published: 1902; illustrated

Subjects: Animals and nature

Type of work: Short fiction

Recommended Ages: 10-13

Form and Content

Just So Stories is a collection of whimsical tales accompanied by the author’s excellent pen-and-ink drawings and humorous verse. The stories are written in the first person and addressed to “O Best Beloved.” (The “beloved” is Rudyard Kipling’s eldest child, Josephine, who died at age six in 1899.) The narrative tone is the intimate voice of a doting father talking to a favorite child.

Like Aesop’s fables, some of the tales in Just So Stories anthropomorphize animals to illustrate human virtues and failings. Like traditional folklore and myths, other stories in the collection explain the origins of natural phenomena.

“The Elephant’s Child,” one of the book’s most popular tales, combines elements of folklore and allegory. Kipling tells how an elephant child’s curiosity led elephants to acquire long noses. Since no one will answer the elephant child’s question, “What does the Crocodile have for dinner?,” the elephant child decides to ask the crocodile himself. The crocodile answers that he will “begin with Elephant’s Child” and grabs the end of the elephant child’s heretofore short nose. After a vicious tug-of-war match, the crocodile finally lets go, leaving the elephant child with a stretched-out nose. Yet, instead of being an indictment of curiosity, the ending of the tale validates this childlike quality: The elephant child finds several good uses for his long nose. “How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin” relates how the rhinoceros’ bad manners and greed led to his loose-fitting skin. After stealing a Parsee’s cake, the rhino takes off his skin and goes for a swim. In retaliation, the Parsee fills the rhino’s skin with cake crumbs and burnt currants. The crumbs and currants cause such great itching when the rhino puts his skin back on that he rubs himself against a tree trunk until his skin hangs in folds. In other stories, the camel’s arrogant exclamations of “Humph!” explain “How the Camel Got His Hump,” and a cat’s pride is deemed responsible for felines’ limited involvement with humankind in “The Cat That Walked by Himself.”

Other tales are more etiological myth (a story to explain the origin of something) than allegory. “How the Leopard Got His Spots” describes the development of camouflaging fur patterns in certain animals. Giraffes and zebras acquire spots and stripes to hide from a leopard, who decides to sport spots in order to beat his prey at their game. In “How the Whale Got His Throat,” a resourceful mariner swallowed by a whale uses his raft to create a grate that blocks the whale’s throat. “By means of a grating, I have stopped your ating,” the mariner declares triumphantly.

Although the animals’ worlds are peopled with humans in many guises—an African hunter, an Indian Parsee, a powerful magician, and a wise king named Suleiman-bin-Daoud and his 999 wives, among others—two stories stand out for their lack of animals. “How the First Letter Was Written” and “How the Alphabet Was Made” are etiological myths that relate how a Neolithic father and daughter playfully create language.

Critical Context

Before the creation of Rudyard Kipling’s naughty but lovable animal-children in Just So Stories, children’s literature tended to offer children two models of behavior: the good child and the bad child. Kipling’s stories declare that it is natural and right for children to exhibit all types of behavior as they form their identities.

Just So Stories celebrates the innocent spontaneity of very young children. Some of Kipling’s other children’s works go a little further by examining the moral development of children as they grow older. The Jungle Books (1894-1895), Kim (1901), and Stalky & Co (1899) relate how children’s characters are formed as they learn to distinguish between good and bad, to be assertive, and to express unique identities.

Mowgli, from The Jungle Books, is the ultimate uninhibited child. An Indian orphan reared in the jungle by wolves, Mowgli is Kipling’s child version of the “noble savage” described by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). Like Rousseau, Kipling believed that human nature would basically turn to good unless corrupted by the evils of civilization. Mowgli’s challenge is to retain his good “animal identity” as he confronts the world of humans. Similar in theme to The Jungle Books, Kim relates the identity crisis of an Irish boy orphaned in India. Kim feels like a Hindu but, through sometimes painful experience, learns that he is a Sahib. Stalky & Co. tells how three boys survive the often brutal bullying by adults and older children at a boys’ boarding school. Like Mowgli and Kim, the boys must struggle to keep their natural goodness intact so that they do not themselves grow up to be oppressors.

In all his works for children, Kipling shows his admiration for the innate nobility of humans and animals and his distaste for the brutality and corrupting influence of “civilized” adults.