Rudyard Kipling - fiction - 1902 - p. 21

The Just So Stories are a collection of origin myths that provide fictitious explanations for various biological and geographical phenomena, such as why camels have a hump. Kipling, who also illustrated the stories, named the collection for his daughter Josephine’s requests that her bedtime stories be “just so.” Kipling has been critiqued for the imperialist attitudes that permeate his work, most notably his conception of the “White Man’s Burden” that he believed provided a justification for the colonization, subjugation, and exploitation of native populations throughout the world.

Key elements: Europe, juvenile literature, origin stories