Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling

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.

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]