Just So Stories

How did the elephant get its trunk, and the camel his hump, and who gave the leopard its spots? In the Just So Stories, Kipling set out to satisfy the ‘satiable curtiosity’ of his young readers with humour and imagination. The Elephant’s Child wrestles with a crocodile on the banks of the ‘great grey-green, greasy Limpopo river’; Stickly-Prickly hedgehog and Slow-and-Solid tortoise turn themselves into an armadillo to foil the predatory ambitions of Painted Jaguar; and the Ethiopian helps a Leopard to become invisible in the speckly shadows of the forest.