The Only Crab in the Sea

by

Rudyard Kipling

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Tonight, we’ll read a story from “Just So Stories” by British author Rudyard Kipling published in 1902 titled “The Crab That Played with the Sea”.The book is a collection of origin stories. 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 obtained their distinctive features, such as how the leopard got his spots.This particular story explains the ebb and flow of the tides, as well as how the crab changed from a huge animal into a small one.