Study notes: Just So Stories
Kipling answers impossible questions with a straight face. How did the camel get a hump? How did the elephant get a trunk? A child in the stories keeps asking, and the teller keeps inventing. The tone is bedtime talk, with repeated sounds you are meant to say aloud. These are not science. They are jokes shaped like myths. The best of them are about curiosity. The book is short, and some of the jokes have aged better than others.
Themes
Curiosity. How a story explains the world without being true. The pleasure of repetition.
People to follow
The elephant’s child, the camel, the whale, and the teller who says “just so.”
Talk about
- Which story is the funniest because it is almost logical?
- What question would you add a “just so” answer for?
- Where is the book playing, and where is an old attitude showing?
Public-domain text.