‘Just So Stories for Little Children’ is a 1902 collection of original stories by the British author Rudyard Kipling. It 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”. Actually, ‘the beloved’ is Kipling’s eldest child Josephine, who died at the age of six in 1899. The narrative tone is the intimate voice of a doting father talking to his child.
The stories describe how one animal or another acquired its most distinctive features, such as how the leopard got his spots, how the elephant got his trunk, how the whale got his throat etc.
Kipling illustrated the original editions of the ‘Just So Stories’. Later illustrations of the book were done by Joseph M. Gleeson.
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