Books with author Hugh Lofting

Just in time for the major motion picture Dolittle starring Robert Downey Jr.—soaring into theaters on January 17, 2020! Journey into the world of Doctor Dolittle, the kind and eccentric naturalist who can speak with animals. Working with original author Hugh Lofting’s son, these books have been fully updated for the modern reader, all while retaining the full charm of the originals. Rediscover the children’s literature classic with three novels from the beloved series!Here are the good Doctor’s three exciting tales of world travel, beginning with his greatest adventure. In The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle, winner of the prestigious Newbery Medal, the Doctor and his young assistant, Tommy Stubbins, travel in search of the brilliant naturalist Long Arrow, culminating in a meeting with the most fabled creature of all, the Great Glass Sea Snail! The Story of Doctor Dolittle details how the Doctor came to learn the languages of animals, and how he was called to Africa where he meets the rarest of all beasts, the marvelous two-headed pushmi-pullyu! And in another African adventure, Doctor Dolittle’s Post Office, the Doctor establishes the only postal service in the world where birds deliver the mail!

Dolittle is soon to be a major motion picture from Universal Pictures, starring Robert Downey Jr. and featuring the voice talents of Emma Thompson, Tom Holland, Selena Gomez, and John Cena! Doctor Dolittle returns in this classic Newbery Medal winner! Doctor Dolittle heads for the high seas in perhaps the most amazing adventure ever experienced by man or animal! Told by 9-and-a-half-year-old Tommy Stubbins, crewman and future naturalist, Doctor Dolittle and company survive a perilous shipwreck and land on the mysterious, floating Spidermonkey Island. There he meets the Great Glass Sea Snail who holds the key to the biggest mystery of all.

This Newbery Medal–winning adventure, the second book in the ever-popular Doctor Dolittle series, finds the physician who can talk to animals setting sail in search of a missing colleague. Join the good doctor and his new assistant, nine-year-old Tommy Stubbins, as they hunt for Long Arrow, the world's greatest naturalist. Together with Jip the Dog, Polynesia the Parrot, and other memorable characters, the doctor and Tommy travel from their home in Puddleby-on-the-Marsh to the Mediterranean sea and South America, braving a shipwreck on a mysterious island and encountering an enigmatic creature at the bottom of the ocean. "Any child who is not given the opportunity to make the acquaintance of this rotund, kindly, and enthusiastic doctor/naturalist and all of his animal friends will miss out on something important," declared wildlife biologist Jane Goodall. Doctor Dolittle has delighted readers for over a century, ever since Hugh Lofting enlivened his letters from the trenches of World War I with fancifully illustrated tales of a man with a special gift for communication. The doctor remains a beloved figure whose concern for the environment and promotion of peaceful coexistence among all the planet's creatures form a fine example for readers of all ages.

Set on the West Coast of Africa, the book follows Doctor Dolittle who helps to capture a slave trader's ship, then organizes the postal service of a small African kingdom, Fantippo, ruled over by King Koko. He later discovers a hidden island populated by prehistoric creatures and attempts to make contact with them, with numerous dangers and difficulties waiting in line.

Just in time for the major motion picture Dolittle starring Robert Downey Jr.—soaring into theaters on January 17, 2020! Journey into the world of Doctor Dolittle, the kind and eccentric naturalist who can speak with animals. Working with original author Hugh Lofting’s son, these books have been fully updated for the modern reader, all while retaining the full charm of the originals. Rediscover the children’s literature classic with four novels from the beloved series!This concluding volume delves into prehistorical puzzles that begin with the Doctor’s arrival on the lunar surface in Doctor Dolittle in the Moon. There he not only meets the Moon Man and intelligent plants, but learns how the moon came to be in the first place. In Doctor Dolittle’s Return, he sets out to reveal all he learned on the moon, but is no sooner off to Africa to rescue his old friend, Mudface the turtle, the last living passenger of Noah’s Ark. In Doctor Dolittle and the Secret Lake, we at last hear his fascinating tale of The Great Flood. This complete collection of the tales of Doctor Dolittle concludes with the delectable dessert that is Gub Gub’s Book, in which the famous pig writes a book of his own: an encyclopedia of food!

Just in time for the major motion picture Dolittle starring Robert Downey Jr.—soaring into theaters on January 17, 2020! Journey into the world of Doctor Dolittle, the kind and eccentric naturalist who can speak with animals. Working with original author Hugh Lofting’s son, these books have been fully updated for the modern reader, all while retaining the full charm of the originals. Rediscover the children’s literature classic with three novels from the beloved series!Here are the good Doctor’s three exciting tales of world travel, beginning with his greatest adventure. In The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle, winner of the prestigious Newbery Medal, the Doctor and his young assistant, Tommy Stubbins, travel in search of the brilliant naturalist Long Arrow, culminating in a meeting with the most fabled creature of all, the Great Glass Sea Snail! The Story of Doctor Dolittle details how the Doctor came to learn the languages of animals, and how he was called to Africa where he meets the rarest of all beasts, the marvelous two-headed pushmi-pullyu! And in another African adventure, Doctor Dolittle’s Post Office, the Doctor establishes the only postal service in the world where birds deliver the mail!

Just in time for the major motion picture Dolittle starring Robert Downey Jr.—soaring into theaters on January 17, 2020! Journey into the world of Doctor Dolittle, the kind and eccentric naturalist who can speak with animals. Working with original author Hugh Lofting’s son, these books have been fully updated for the modern reader, all while retaining the full charm of the originals. Rediscover the children’s literature classic with this gorgeous hardcover boxed set!This collectible boxed set includes: The Story of Doctor Dolittle The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle (which inspired the upcoming movie starring Robert Downey Jr.) Doctor Dolittle’s Post Office Doctor Dolittle’s Circus Doctor Dolittle’s Caravan Doctor Dolittle and the Green Canary Doctor Dolittle’s Zoo Doctor Dolittle’s Puddleby Adventures Doctor Dolittle’s Garden Doctor Dolittle in the Moon Doctor Dolittle’s Return Doctor Dolittle and the Secret Lake Gub Gub’s Book

Just in time for the major motion picture Dolittle starring Robert Downey Jr.—soaring into theaters on January 17, 2020! Journey into the world of Doctor Dolittle, the kind and eccentric naturalist who can speak with animals. Working with original author Hugh Lofting’s son, these books have been fully updated for the modern reader, all while retaining the full charm of the originals. Rediscover the children’s literature classic with three novels from the beloved series!The Doctor has returned home at last to Puddleby-on-the-Marsh. In Doctor Dolittle’s Zoo, he immediately sets to work expanding his menagerie, including a home for crossbred dogs. This brings with it a multitude of tales, all related in Doctor Dolittle’s Puddleby Adventures, including a mystery solved by Kling, the Dog Detective. Finally, in Doctor Dolittle’s Garden the Doctor delves into the languages of insects, culminating in a surprise visit from the Giant Lunar Moth!

Doctor John Dolittle is the central character of a series of children's books by Hugh Lofting starting with the 1920 The Story of Doctor Dolittle. He is a doctor who shuns human patients in favour of animals, with whom he can speak in their own languages. He later becomes a naturalist, using his abilities to speak with animals to better understand nature and the history of the world. Doctor Dolittle first appeared in the author's illustrated letters to children, written from the trenches during World War I when actual news, he later said, was either too horrible or too dull. The stories are set in early Victorian England, where Doctor John Dolittle lives in the fictional English village of Puddleby-on-the-Marsh in the West Country. The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle Doctor Dolittle has a few close human friends, including Tommy Stubbins and Matthew Mugg, the Cats'-Meat Man. The animal team includes Polynesia (a parrot), Gub-Gub (a pig), Jip (a dog), Dab-Dab (a duck), Chee-Chee (a monkey), Too-Too (an owl), the Pushmi-pullyu, and a White Mouse later named simply "Whitey". THERE are some of us now reaching middle age who discover themselves to be lamenting the past in one respect if in none other, that there are no books written now for children comparable with those of thirty years ago. I say written for children because the new psychological business of writing about them as though they were small pills or hatched in some especially scientific method is extremely popular today. Writing for children rather than about them is very difficult as everybody who has tried it knows. It can only be done, I am convinced, by somebody having a great deal of the child in his own outlook and sensibilities. Such was the author of "The Little Duke" and "The Dove in the Eagle's Nest," such the author of "A Flatiron for a Farthing," and "The Story of a Short Life." Such, above all, the author of "Alice in Wonderland." Grownups imagine that they can do the trick by adopting baby language and talking down to their very critical audience. There never was a greater mistake. The imagination of the author must be a child's imagination and yet maturely consistent, so that the White Queen in "Alice," for instance, is seen just as a child would see her, but she continues always herself through all her distressing adventures. The supreme touch of the white rabbit pulling on his white gloves as he hastens is again absolutely the child's vision, but the white rabbit as guide and introducer of Alice's adventures belongs to mature grown insight. Geniuses are rare and, without being at all an undue praiser of times past, one can say without hesitation that until the appearance of Hugh Lofting, the successor of Miss Yonge, Mrs. Ewing, Mrs. Gatty and Lewis Carroll had not appeared. I remember the delight with which some six months ago I picked up the first "Dolittle" book in the Hampshire bookshop at Smith College in Northampton. One of Mr. Lofting's pictures was quite enough for me. The picture that I lighted upon when I first opened the book was the one of the monkeys making a chain with their arms across the gulf. Then I looked further and discovered Bumpo reading fairy stories to himself. And then looked again and there was a picture of John Dolittle's house. But pictures are not enough although most authors draw so badly that if one of them happens to have the genius for line that Mr. Lofting shows there must be, one feels, something in his writing as well. There is. You cannot read the first paragraph of the book, which begins in the right way "Once upon a time" without knowing that Mr. Lofting believes in his story quite as much as he expects you to. That is the first essential for a story teller. Then you discover as you read on that he has the right eye for the right detail. What child-inquiring mind could resist this intriguing sentence to be found on the second page of the book:

In Doctor Dolittle's Circus the doctor needs money to pay off a voyage to Africa, so he joins a circus with the pushmi-pullyu as his attraction. He enlightens a circus owner who cares little for animals, fights against the practice of fox hunting and helps other creatures such as a circus seal and cart horses that is too old to work. Hugh John Lofting was a British author who created the character of Doctor Dolittle - one of the classics of children's literature. His early education was at Mount St. Mary's College in Sheffield, after which he went to the United States, completing a degree in civil engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He enlisted in the Irish Guards to serve in World War I. Not wishing to write to his children of the brutality of the war, he wrote imaginative letters that were the foundation of the Doctor Dolittle novels.

Doctor Dolittle's Post Office is the third of Hugh Lofting's Doctor Dolittle books. Set on the West Coast of Africa, the book follows the episodic format of most other books in the series. In the beginning of the book, Doctor Dolittle helps to capture a slave trader's ship, then organizes the postal service of a small African kingdom, Fantippo, ruled over by King Koko. Over the course of later chapters, he discovers a hidden island populated by prehistoric creatures, gets thrown into another African jail, invents animal alphabets, and defeats at least two armies. Each of the animals in the Dolittle family also tells a personal story. The postal program grows into a worldwide postal and publishing service for the benefit of animals everywhere.