Just So Stories

Last updated

Just So Stories
Just So Stories Kipling 1902.jpg
First edition
Author Rudyard Kipling
IllustratorRudyard Kipling
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
Genre Children's book
Publisher Macmillan
Publication date
1902

Just So Stories for Little Children is a 1902 collection of origin stories by the British author Rudyard Kipling. Considered a classic of children's literature, the book is among Kipling's best known works.

Contents

Kipling began working on the book by telling the first three chapters as bedtime stories to his daughter Josephine. These had to be told "just so" (exactly in the words she was used to) or she would complain. The stories illustrate how animals acquired their distinctive features, such as how the leopard got his spots. For the book, Kipling illustrated the stories himself.

The stories have appeared in a variety of adaptations including a musical and animated films. Evolutionary biologists have noted that what Kipling did in fiction in a Lamarckian way, [1] they have done in reality, providing Darwinian explanations for the evolutionary development of animal features. [2] [3]

Context

The stories, first published in 1902, are origin stories, fantastic accounts of how various features of animals came to be. [4] A forerunner of these stories is Kipling's "How Fear Came", in The Second Jungle Book (1895). In it, Mowgli hears the story of how the tiger got his stripes.

Book

Approach

The Just So Stories began as bedtime stories told by Kipling to his daughter "Effie" (Josephine, Kipling's firstborn); when the first three were published in a children's magazine, a year before her death, Kipling explained: "in the evening there were stories meant to put Effie to sleep, and you were not allowed to alter those by one single little word. They had to be told just so; or Effie would wake up and put back the missing sentence. So at last they came to be like charms, all three of them – the whale tale, the camel tale, and the rhinoceros tale." [4]

(The name Effie does not appear in the text of the stories, where the narrator now and again says O my Best Beloved to his listening child instead.)

Nine of the thirteen Just So Stories tell how particular animals were modified from their original forms to their current forms by the acts of human beings or magical beings. For example, the Whale has a tiny throat because he swallowed a mariner , who tied a raft inside to block the whale from swallowing other men. The Camel has a hump given to him by a djinn as punishment for the camel's refusing to work (the hump allows the camel to work longer between times of eating). The Leopard's spots were painted by an Ethiopian (after the Ethiopian painted himself black). The Kangaroo gets its powerful hind legs, long tail and hopping gait after being chased all day by a dingo, sent by a minor god responding to the Kangaroo's request to be made different from all other animals.

Contents

How the Rhinoceros got his Skin, woodcut by Kipling Justso rhino.jpg
How the Rhinoceros got his Skin, woodcut by Kipling
  1. How the Whale Got His Throat – why the larger whales eat only small prey.
  2. How the Camel Got His Hump – how the idle camel was punished and given a hump.
  3. How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin – why rhinos have folds in their skin and bad tempers.
  4. How the Leopard Got His Spots – why leopards have spots.
  5. The Elephant's Child/How the Elephant Got His Trunk – how the elephant's trunk became long.
  6. The Sing-Song of Old Man Kangaroo – how the kangaroo assumed long legs and tail.
  7. The Beginning of the Armadillos – how a hedgehog and tortoise transformed into the first armadillos.
  8. How the First Letter Was Written – introduces the only characters who appear in more than one story: a family of cave-people, called Tegumai Bopsulai (the father), Teshumai Tewindrow (the mother), and Taffimai Metallumai, shortened to Taffy, (the daughter), and explains how Taffy delivered a picture message to her mother.
  9. How the Alphabet Was Made – tells how Taffy and her father invent an alphabet.
  10. The Crab that Played with the Sea – explains the ebb and flow of the tides, as well as how the crab changed from a huge animal into a small one.
  11. The Cat that Walked by Himself – explains how man domesticated all the wild animals, even the cat, which insisted on greater independence.
  12. The Butterfly that Stamped – how Solomon saved the pride of a butterfly, and the Queen of Sheba used this to prevent his wives scolding him.
  13. The Tabu Tale – how Taffy learnt all the taboos. (Missing from most British editions; first appeared in the Scribner edition in the U.S. in 1903).

Illustrations

Kipling illustrated the original editions of the Just So Stories. [5] Later illustrators of the book include Joseph M. Gleeson. [6]

Editions

As well as appearing in a collection, the individual stories have also been published as separate books: often in large-format, illustrated editions for younger children. [7]

Adaptations

Adaptations of Just So Stories have been made in forms such as cartoons, including several in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, [8] [9] [10] and musicals, including one in 1984 by Anthony Drewe and George Stiles. [11]

Reception

Contemporary

"How the Elephant Got His Trunk" Illustration at p. 73 in Just So Stories (c1912).png
"How the Elephant Got His Trunk"

H. W. Boynton, writing in The Atlantic in 1903, commented that only a century earlier children had had to be content with the Bible, Pilgrim's Progress , Paradise Lost , and Foxe's Book of Martyrs . But in his day "A much pleasanter bill of fare is being provided for them". Boynton argued that with Just So Stories, Kipling did for "very little children" what The Jungle Book had done for older ones. He described the book as "artfully artless, in its themes, in its repetitions, in its habitual limitation, and occasional abeyance, of adult humor. It strikes a child as the kind of yarn his father or uncle might have spun if he had just happened to think of it; and it has, like all good fairy-business, a sound core of philosophy". [12]

Modern

John Lee described the book as a classic work of children's literature. [13] Sue Walsh observed in 2007 that critics have rigidly categorised Just So Stories as "Children's Literature", and have in consequence given it scant literary attention. In her view, if critics mention the book at all, they talk about what kind of reading is good for children and what they are capable of understanding. The stories are discussed, she argues, by critics such as Elliott Gose "in terms of ideas about the child’s pleasure (conceived of in sensual terms divorced of intellectual understanding) in the oral aspects of the text which are said to prompt an ‘active Participation’ which seems largely to be understood in terms of the ‘oral savouring’ of repetition". [14]

Evolutionary developmental biology

The molecular biologist Walter M. Fitch remarked in 2012 (published posthumously) that the stories, while "delightful", are "very Lamarckian", giving the example of the stretching of the elephant's snout in a tug-of-war, as the acquired trait (a long trunk) is inherited by all the elephant's descendants. [1] Lewis I. Held's 2014 account of evolutionary developmental biology ("evo-devo"), How the Snake Lost its Legs: Curious Tales from the Frontier of Evo-Devo , noted that while Kipling's Just So Stories "offered fabulous tales about how the leopard got its spots, how the elephant got its trunk, and so forth [and] remains one of the most popular children's books of all time", fables "are poor substitutes for real understanding." Held aimed "to blend Darwin's rigor with Kipling's whimsy", naming the many "Curious Tales" such as "How the Duck Got its Bill" in his book in the style of Just So Stories, and observing that truth could be stranger than fiction. [2] Sean B. Carroll's 2005 book Endless Forms Most Beautiful has been called a new Just So Stories, one that explains the "spots, stripes, and bumps" that had attracted Kipling's attention in his children's stories. A reviewer in BioScience suggested that "Kipling would be riveted." [3]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rudyard Kipling</span> English writer and poet (1865–1936)

Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English novelist, short-story writer, poet, and journalist. He was born in British India, which inspired much of his work.

This is a bibliography of works by Rudyard Kipling, including books, short stories, poems, and collections of his works.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mowgli</span> Fictional character created by Rudyard Kipling

Mowgli is a fictional character and the protagonist of Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book stories. He is a feral boy from the Pench area in Seoni, Madhya Pradesh, India, who originally appeared in Kipling's short story "In the Rukh" and then became the most prominent character in the collections The Jungle Book and The Second Jungle Book (1894–1895), which also featured stories about other characters.

<i>The Jungle Book</i> 1894 childrens book by Rudyard Kipling

The Jungle Book (1894) is a collection of stories by the English author Rudyard Kipling. Most of the characters are animals such as Shere Khan the tiger and Baloo the bear, though a principal character is the boy or "man-cub" Mowgli, who is raised in the jungle by wolves. The stories are set in a forest in India; one place mentioned repeatedly is "Seeonee" (Seoni), in the central state of Madhya Pradesh.

<i>The Second Jungle Book</i> Book by Rudyard Kipling

The Second Jungle Book is a sequel to The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling. First published in 1895, it features five stories about Mowgli and three unrelated stories, all but one set in India, most of which Kipling wrote while living in Vermont. All of the stories were previously published in magazines in 1894–5, often under different titles. The 1994 film The Jungle Book used it as a source.

<i>The Jungle Book</i> (1994 film) 1994 American film

Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book, also known as The Jungle Book, is a 1994 American adventure film co-written and directed by Stephen Sommers, produced by Edward S. Feldman and Raju Patel, from a story by Ronald Yanover and Mark Geldman. It is a live-action adaptation of the Mowgli stories from The Jungle Book (1894) and The Second Jungle Book (1895) by Rudyard Kipling, alongside Walt Disney's animated feature film of the same name from 1967; unlike its counterparts, the animal characters in this film do not talk.

<i>All the Mowgli Stories</i> Collection of short stories by Rudyard Kipling

All the Mowgli Stories is a collection of short stories by Rudyard Kipling. As the title suggests, the book is a chronological compilation of the stories about Mowgli from The Jungle Book and The Second Jungle Book, together with "In the Rukh". The book also includes the epigrammatic poems added to the stories for their original book publication. All of the stories and poems had originally been published between 1893 and 1895.

In science and philosophy, a just-so story is an untestable narrative explanation for a cultural practice, a biological trait, or behavior of humans or other animals. The pejorative nature of the expression is an implicit criticism that reminds the listener of the fictional and unprovable nature of such an explanation. Such tales are common in folklore genres like mythology. A less pejorative term is a pourquoi story, which has been used to describe usually more mythological or otherwise traditional examples of this genre, aimed at children.

"The law of the jungle" is an expression that has come to describe a scenario where "anything goes". The Oxford English Dictionary defines the Law of the Jungle as "the code of survival in jungle life, now usually with reference to the superiority of brute force or self-interest in the struggle for survival".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Feodor Stepanovich Rojankovsky</span> Russian painter

Feodor Stepanovich Rojankovsky, also known as Rojan, was a Russian émigré illustrator. He is well known both for children's book illustration and for erotic art. He won the 1956 Caldecott Medal for U.S. picture book illustration from the American Library Association, recognizing Frog Went A-Courtin' by John Langstaff.

Just So Songs is a collection of twelve poems from Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories set to music by Sir Edward German in 1903. It consists of musical settings for voice and piano of "When the Cabin port holes", "The Camel's Hump", "This Uninhabited Island", "I keep six honest serving men", "I am the most wise Baavian", "Kangaroo and Dingo", "Merrow Down", "Of all the tribe of Tegumai", "The Riddle", "The First Friend", "There never was a queen like Balkis", and "Rolling Down to Rio".

A pourquoi story, also known as an origin story, pourquoi tale or an etiological tale, is a fictional narrative that explains why something is the way it is, for example why snakes have no legs or why tigers have striped coats. Many legends, origin myths and folk tales are pourquoi stories. A more pejorative term for these stories is a just-so story, coined by English writer Rudyard Kipling in 1902.

<i>Just So</i> (musical)

Just So is a musical by Anthony Drewe and George Stiles written in 1984 based on the Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling. Just So was originally produced by Cameron Mackintosh at the Watermill Theatre and in 1990, also by Mackintosh, at the Tricycle Theatre in London. It has been subsequently produced at various theatres in the US and UK.

<i>Puck of Pooks Hill</i> 1906 book by Rudyard Kipling

Puck of Pook's Hill is a fantasy book by Rudyard Kipling, published in 1906, containing a series of short stories set in different periods of English history. It can count both as historical fantasy – since some of the stories told of the past have clear magical elements, and as contemporary fantasy – since it depicts a magical being active and practising his magic in the England of the early 1900s when the book was written.

Rabbit Ears Productions is a production company best known for producing three television series that feature individual episodes adapting popular pieces of children's literature. Rabbit Ears episodes have been released on home video, broadcast on Showtime, and reran on PBS. The series features actors such as Robin Williams, Raul Julia, Laura Dern, Denzel Washington, Meryl Streep, John Hurt, Danny Glover, and others narrating children's books either well known in the United States or from around the world. The series made use of a limited animation technique whereby still images were moved throughout the scene, similar to modern motion comics. Rabbit Ears Productions has also won numerous awards, including Parents' Choice Awards and Grammy Awards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Sing-Song of Old Man Kangaroo</span>

"The Sing-Song of Old Man Kangaroo" is a short story — one of the Just So stories by Rudyard Kipling.

<i>Endless Forms Most Beautiful</i> (book) 2005 evo-devo book by Sean B. Carroll

Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo and the Making of the Animal Kingdom is a 2005 book by the molecular biologist Sean B. Carroll. It presents a summary of the emerging field of evolutionary developmental biology and the role of toolkit genes. It has won numerous awards for science communication.

The Jungle Book is a Disney media franchise that commenced in 1967 with the theatrical release of The Jungle Book. It is based on Rudyard Kipling's works of the same name. The franchise includes a 2003 sequel to the animated film and three live-action films produced by Walt Disney Pictures.

<i>How the Snake Lost Its Legs</i> Book by Lewis I. Held, Jr.

How the Snake Lost Its Legs: Curious Tales from the Frontier of Evo-Devo is a 2014 book on evolutionary developmental biology by Lewis I. Held, Jr. The title pays homage to Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories, but the "tales" are strictly scientific, explaining how a wide range of animal features evolved, in molecular detail. The book has been admired by other biologists as both accurate and accessible.

Many adaptations of Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories have been made in various countries, as cartoons, musicals and a children's opera.

References

  1. 1 2 Fitch, Walter M. (2012). The Three Failures of Creationism: Logic, Rhetoric, and Science. University of California Press. pp. 157–158. ISBN   978-0-520-95166-2.
  2. 1 2 Held, Lewis I. (2014). How the Snake Lost its Legs. Curious Tales from the Frontier of Evo-Devo. Cambridge University Press. pp. ix–xi. ISBN   978-1-107-62139-8.
  3. 1 2 Mabee, Paula M. (2005). "The New "Just So" Stories". BioScience. 55 (10): 898–899. doi: 10.1641/0006-3568(2005)055[0898:tnjss]2.0.co;2 .
  4. 1 2 Karlin, Daniel (23 December 2015). "How the Stories Got Their Name: Kipling and the Origins of the 'Just-So' Stories". Oxford University Press . Retrieved 27 October 2016.
  5. ↑ "Illustrations by Rudyard Kipling". The Victorian Web. Retrieved 27 October 2016.
  6. ↑ Just So Stories, Rudyard Kipling, author and illustrator, additional color plates by Joseph M. Gleeson. Connecticut: Konecky and Konecky, ISBN   1-56852-377-7 (reprint of Doubleday & Co 1912 edition)
  7. ↑ "Search results for 'ti:Just So Stories au:Rudyard Kipling' > 'Book' > 'Fiction' > 'Juvenile'". WorldCat. Retrieved 27 October 2016.
  8. ↑ Smirnov, Victor (director) (1936). "A Brave Sailor (How the Whale Got His Throat)". Animator.ru.
  9. ↑ Suteyev, Vladimir (director) (1938). "Why Rhinoceros Has Skin With Wrinkles". Animator.ru.
  10. ↑ Shchekalin, V. (director) (1936). "A Little Elephant (How the Elephant Got His Trunk))". Animator.ru.
  11. ↑ "Stiles and Drewe - Just So - History". Stiles and Drewe. Retrieved 11 April 2018.
  12. ↑ Boynton, H. W. (May 1903). "Just So Stories, by Rudyard Kipling. A review by H. W. Boynton". The Atlantic . Retrieved 27 October 2016.
  13. ↑ Lee, John (July 2013). "Rudyard Kipling". Oxford Bibliographies. Retrieved 27 October 2016.
  14. ↑ Walsh, Sue (September 2007). "Kipling's Children and the Category of 'Children's Literature'". The Kipling Society. Retrieved 27 October 2016.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.