Just So Stories

Rudyard Kipling, who lived from 1865 to 1936, was a British writer born in India. He is the author of The Jungle Book, Kim and a great deal of poetry, and in 1907 he became the first English-language writer to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. The Just So Stories for Little Children were published in 1902 and began as tales that he told to his own children at bedtime.

The collection is made up of fantastic stories, typically explaining how various animals came to be the way they are today. The Whale gets his throat, the Camel his hump, the Rhinoceros his skin and the Leopard his spots. Behind each explanation is a small comedy of pride, laziness or curiosity. Kipling’s language plays a major part, with its repeated refrains, its rolling sentences, its exotic place names and its direct address to the Best Beloved, the child listener. He also drew his own illustrations for the first edition, and many readers still associate the stories with those drawings.

Because the stories were designed to be told, they suit audio perfectly. Children enjoy the rhythm and the wordplay, and adults will notice the humour and the careful construction. Some of the attitudes and vocabulary of the period have dated, but the creative energy remains.

This LibriVox recording contains twelve chapters and lasts a little over three and a half hours. The readers are Reynard T. Fox and Reynard’s Dad, who share the stories between them. It is an ideal bedtime companion. The rhythm of the sentences invites you to join in.