Just So Stories

Twelve playful origin tales by Rudyard Kipling, first published as a book in 1902. Each one explains, with a wink, how something came to be: how the whale got his throat, how the camel got his hump, how the alphabet was made.

Kipling first told them aloud to his own children, and they are written to be heard, full of repetition, rhythm, and made-up words that children love to say back.

Twelve, from How the Whale Got His Throat to The Butterfly That Stamped. Most stories end with a short poem, and those are read aloud too.

Kipling drew the original black-and-white pictures for the 1902 edition himself. In 1912, Joseph M. Gleeson painted a set of color illustrations for an American edition, and most of the Kindred Thicket illustrations are adapted from his work.

Phil Chenevert, for LibriVox, the volunteer public-domain audiobook project. Kindred Thicket has leveled and trimmed each recording so the stories play cleanly, one after another.

This is a Classic Edition, so Kipling's words are kept as he wrote them, with one exception. In How the Leopard Got His Spots, a racial slur is removed from the reading.

The read-aloud of every story, right here on this page. The YouTube videos, Listening Grove pages, Yoto pack, and free character cards are on the way.