Just So Stories

Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories is a collection of animal tales for 10 year olds that explain, with a completely straight face, how the animals ended up the way they are.

What happens

How did the whale get such a small throat? Why does the camel have a hump? Why is the rhinoceros so wrinkly and so bad-tempered? Each story answers one question, and none of the answers are true, which is exactly the point.

The whale ate every fish in the sea until he swallowed a shipwrecked sailor who danced hornpipes in his stomach. The camel said "Humph!" to every job going, until a Djinn gave him one of his own. The rhinoceros stole a man's cake, so the man filled his skin with stale cake crumbs.

Kipling talks straight to the reader the whole way through. He calls them "O my Best Beloved". He reminds them over and over not to forget the suspenders (you'll see why). The Elephant's Child is full of "'satiable curtiosity" and gets spanked by every aunt and uncle he asks. It's a book that begs to be read aloud, and the words are half the fun. Say "great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River" in your best voice and see what happens!

Little poems sit between some of the stories too, like the one about getting the hump when you've too little to do.

The vocabulary is old-fashioned and full of made-up words, so a child reading alone may stumble. Shared at bedtime, it flies.

There's one thing to know first. This is an old book, and some of it hasn't aged well. The Leopard story is about a man changing the colour of his skin, and there are dated descriptions of people from other countries. Our copy leaves out one line of that story, where the original used a racist slur. You may want to read that story first and talk it through.

If your reader loves the animals and the silliness, the rest of the book is a treat. The Armadillo story, with its tongue-twisting tortoise and hedgehog, is especially good for giggles.

What to read next

If they'd like more old tales about how the world got to be the way it is, West African Folk-Tales has a whole set, many of them starring Anansi the spider. He tricks his way into owning every story ever told.