Books at Bedtime By Calming Anxiety - THE SING-SONG OF OLD MAN KANGAROO - By Rudyard Kipling

The Sing-Song of Old Man Kangaroo by Rudyard Kipling — A Calming Bedtime Story for Sleep & Insomnia | Books at Bedtime

A soothing bedtime story to help you drift off tonight: Rudyard Kipling's rhythmic, chant-like Just So Story The Sing-Song of Old Man Kangaroo, read slowly and gently for sleep and insomnia relief. Kipling wrote the Just So Stories specifically as bedtime tales, to be told "just so," word for word, until his own daughter drifted off to sleep — which makes this one of the most naturally hypnotic stories in the whole Books at Bedtime strand, also known as Coffee Break for the Soul, from the Calming Anxiety podcast.

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Narrated softly by Martin Hewlett, clinical hypnotherapist and former paramedic, this reading follows an ordinary, four-legged grey kangaroo whose wish to be "wonderfully run after" is granted by the little god Nikaar, in the form of Yellow Dog Dingo chasing him right across the middle of Australia until his legs and hop become the kangaroo's forever. Repetitive, sing-song, and almost lulling by design, it's an easy, unhurried listen for falling asleep, insomnia, or quieting an anxious mind at the end of the day.

First published in 1902 in the collection Just So Stories for Little Children, Rudyard Kipling's The Sing-Song of Old Man Kangaroo is in the public domain worldwide (Kipling died in 1936); this reading is Calming Anxiety's own narration of the classic public-domain text.

This episode joins the Just So Stories already in the Books at Bedtime strand — How the Whale Got His Throat, The Elephant's Child, How the Leopard Got His Spots, How the Camel Got His Hump, The Cat That Walked by Himself, and The Beginning of the Armadillos — alongside Oscar Wilde's fairy tales, classic short fiction from Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf, and Kate Chopin, and longer serialised reads including Alice in Wonderland, The Time Machine, and The Hound of the Baskervilles, with new instalments added regularly to the main Calming Anxiety feed.

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Music: All music by Chris Collins