The famous author of "The Jungle Book," Rudyard Kipling, originally told these animal stories to his children Josephine, Elsie, and John to help them fall asleep, before they were published in London in 1902 under the title "Just So Stories For Little Children." "Just so" in the sense of "exactly so (and not otherwise)," because his daughter Josephine would completely wake up if he left anything out. In an original and ironic way, children's "why" questions serve as the starting point for the most adventurous explanations, such as how the camel got its hump, why the elephant has such a long trunk, and how the alphabet came to be. Kipling, also a talented illustrator, contributed his own drawings to the book edition. Our edition follows the first German translation titled "Nur so Märchen" from 1903 by Sebastian Harms.