# Just So Stories — Character guide

> Key figures in Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling.

- [Taffy](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/just_so_stories_se/characters/taffy.md): Taffy trails her father Tegumai everywhere, dirty and unspanked, until a broken spear and a stranger's misunderstanding push her to draw pictures that speak. She is impatient with silly beaver sketches but sharp enough t
- [Painted Jaguar](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/just_so_stories_se/characters/painted_jaguar.md): Painted Jaguar hunts everything he can catch and relies on his mother's tidy instructions for eating hedgehogs and tortoises. When Stickly-Prickly and Slow-Solid swap tricks and then swap shapes, his paw and his pride bo
- [Pau Amma the Crab](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/just_so_stories_se/characters/pau_amma_the_crab.md): Pau Amma is so vast that his shell spans from Sarawak to Pahang, and he stirs the Sea just to prove he matters. The Eldest Magician strips his shell away, leaving him soft and ashamed, and bargains a new safety into ever
- [The Elephant's Child](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/just_so_stories_se/characters/the_elephants_child.md): He pesters every relative with 'what does the Crocodile have for dinner,' and their spankings only sharpen his appetite for answers. At the great grey-green Limpopo the Crocodile grabs his nose and pulls it into a trunk,
- [Suleiman-bin-Daoud](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/just_so_stories_se/characters/suleiman_bin_daoud.md): Suleiman-bin-Daoud wears a ring that summons Afreets, Djinns, Fairies, and even Azrael, and he can hear what rocks and trees say. His one attempt to show off by feeding all the world's animals ends in shame when a single
- [Old Man Kangaroo](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/just_so_stories_se/characters/old_man_kangaroo.md): Old Man Kangaroo dances on an Australian outcrop and pesters Little God Nqa, Middle God Nquing, and Big God Nqong to remake him. Nqong grants the wish by loosing Yellow-Dog Dingo, and the chase across the Flinders and th
- [Tegumai Bopsulai](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/just_so_stories_se/characters/tegumai_bopsulai.md): Tegumai is a chief of the Tribe of Tegumai, a hunter whose spears break at inconvenient moments and whose patience for hide-hanging is thin. When his daughter Taffy tries to send a picture-letter to her mother, the misun
- [The Stranger-man](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/just_so_stories_se/characters/the_stranger_man.md): The Stranger-man is a Tewara — not of Tegumai's tribe — who happens to be passing when Taffy needs a messenger, and who accepts the birch-bark drawing in good faith. He arrives panting and polite at the Cave, only to be 
- [Stickly-Prickly Hedgehog](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/just_so_stories_se/characters/stickly_prickly_hedgehog.md): Stickly-Prickly Hedgehog lives in the turbid Amazon alongside Slow-and-Solid Tortoise, and together they have worked out that a confused predator is a harmless one. When the Painted Jaguar arrives reciting his mother's t
- [Daddy](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/just_so_stories_se/characters/daddy.md): The narrator's father who tells the stories to Best Beloved.
- [The Parsee](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/just_so_stories_se/characters/the_parsee.md): Pestonjee Bomonjee is a Parsee cast away on a hot island with three cakes and no company, until a Rhinoceros swims over and eats his cake — hat and all — with appalling manners. Rather than rage, the Parsee bakes a secon
- [The Butterfly](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/just_so_stories_se/characters/the_butterfly.md): The Butterfly is a small, puffed-up creature in Suleiman-bin-Daoud's garden who has promised the King he will not stamp, and has boasted to his wife that he can. His wife, egged on by Balkis, calls his bluff, and the But
- [The Cat](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/just_so_stories_se/characters/the_cat.md): The Cat is the one animal who refuses the Woman's terms outright, declaring himself neither friend nor servant, and instead negotiates a wager: one word of praise earns him the Cave, two the fire, three the milk. He then
- [The Dog](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/just_so_stories_se/characters/the_dog.md): In the newly made world, the Dog is the first of the Wild Things to approach the Woman's Cave, lured by the smell of roasted mutton and the promise of a warm place by the fire. His bargain sets the pattern that Horse, Co
- [The Whale](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/just_so_stories_se/characters/the_whale.md): The Whale rules the ocean by appetite alone, eating starfish, garfish, and the really truly twirly-whirly eel until only one small 'Stute Fish remains. When that clever fish suggests he try Man, the Whale gulps down a Ma
- [The Leopard](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/just_so_stories_se/characters/the_leopard.md): The Leopard and his human companion the Ethiopian once hunted easily across the greyish-yellowish-reddish Veldt, until Giraffe and Zebra slipped into the shadowy forest and vanished from sight. Reduced to eating rats and
- [The Camel](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/just_so_stories_se/characters/the_camel.md): When the world is new-and-all and every animal has a job, the Camel sits in the middle of the Howling Desert chewing milkweed and refusing to trot, fetch, or plough. Horse, Dog, and Ox each appeal to him in turn and each
- [Wild Horse](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/just_so_stories_se/characters/wild_horse.md): A wild horse who is tamed by Man in the Cave.
- [The Rhinoceros](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/just_so_stories_se/characters/the_rhinoceros.md): In the days when the Rhinoceros's skin fit him tight as a Noah's Ark toy, he charged down from the Uninhabited Interior, upset the Parsee's oil-stove, and spiked the freshly baked cake on his horn. The Parsee, who never 
- [Balkis](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/just_so_stories_se/characters/balkis.md): Balkis stands behind the camphor-tree among the red lilies, watching her husband Suleiman-bin-Daoud lose his joy to the endless squabbles of his royal wives. When she overhears the Butterfly's Wife fretting about her boa
- [Best Beloved](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/just_so_stories_se/characters/best_beloved.md): The child to whom the stories are addressed.
- [The Djinn](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/just_so_stories_se/characters/the_djinn.md): He presides over the desert realm where the Camel refuses to work, answering the complaining Ox, Dog, and Horse with a plan of his own. His authority is playful yet absolute: he summons a puff of magic and shapes the Hum
- [Slow-and-Solid](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/just_so_stories_se/characters/slow_and_solid.md): He is the Hedgehog's calm ally in the tangled jungle, where the Painted Jaguar hunts by confusing his two prickly prey. While the Hedgehog panics and practices rolling into a ball, Slow-and-Solid supplies the crucial pla
- [The Eldest Magician](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/just_so_stories_se/characters/the_eldest_magician.md): He is the world's first teacher and orderer, assigning each animal its role in the Time of the Very Beginnings, from Elephant to Turtle. When the Sea falls out of rhythm, he traces the mischief to Pau Amma the Crab and c
- [Mummy](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/just_so_stories_se/characters/mummy.md): The narrator's mother who appears in the frame story.
- [Teshumai Tewindrow](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/just_so_stories_se/characters/teshumai_tewindrow.md): She is the mistress of the Neolithic Cave, a woman of swift judgment and quicker temper, who mistakes Taffy's drawn message for evidence that Tegumai has been speared. Her certainty is comic and terrifying: she screams, 
- [Tortoise](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/just_so_stories_se/characters/tortoise.md): A slow tortoise who becomes an armadillo with the hedgehog.
- [The Crocodile](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/just_so_stories_se/characters/the_crocodile.md): He lurks in the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo, promising the curious Elephant's Child a whispered answer about his dinner. His trick is appetite itself: he seizes the little nose and pulls, threshing his tail like an 
- [Taffimai Metallumai](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/just_so_stories_se/characters/taffimai_metallumai.md): Taffy's full name used in the alphabet story.
- [Ethiopian](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/just_so_stories_se/characters/ethiopian.md): He is the Leopard's human partner, a practical hunter who grows puzzled when the jungle animals vanish into the landscape. Following Baviaan's counsel, he darkens his own skin to blend with the shadows and presses his fi
- [Dingo](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/just_so_stories_se/characters/dingo.md): A yellow dog who chases Old Man Kangaroo across Australia.
- [Mother Jaguar](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/just_so_stories_se/characters/mother_jaguar.md): The Painted Jaguar's mother who gives him hunting advice.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/just_so_stories_se/characters