Click on the links below to see my favourite versions of these. The stories have also been published separately in picture-book format.

Our family owns the copy you can see on the right ( or click here to see it). The Just-So Stories were originally published together in one book. It's called How Fear Came in which Mowgli hears the story of how the tiger got his stripes. Kipling's novel, The Second Jungle Book, published in 1895, contains a story which was probably a fore-runner to the Just-So Stories. The black-and-white drawing above is one of Kipling's illustrations for The Elephant's Child. The meaning of JUST-SO STORY is a speculative story or explanation of doubtful or unprovable validity that is put forward to account for the origin of. The original editions of the stories were illustrated by Kipling himself. Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories, a collection of children’s tales that describe, in fantastical language and playful verse, how the features of various animals came to be (How the Camel Got His Hump, How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin, How the Leopard Got His Spots, etc) turns 120 this year. For example, the camel was punished because he was lazy. Some of the tales also have a moral or a cautionary message to them which was common with stories written for children in Kipling's day.

For example, How the Camel got his Hump tells the story of how a hump was given to the camel by a djinn as punishment for the camel refusing to work so that the camel would be able to work longer between feedings.

Each of the J ust-So Stories tells of an animal which is changed from its original form to its current form by the act of a man or of some magical being.

So stories