Other editions of book The Story of Doctor Dolittle

"The Story of Doctor Dolittle" is Hugh Lofting's classic children's novel about an animal-loving British country doctor who learns he can talk to animals. Doctor Dolittle puts his unique skill to use by traveling to Africa with his pets to help cure some sick monkeys. "The Story of Doctor Dolittle" which began as a series of letters from Hugh Lofting to his children during WWI is the first in a series of some of the most loved children's books of all time.

If You Could Talk To The Animals in Your Life, What Would They Tell You?The Story of Doctor Dolittle, Being the History of His Peculiar Life at Home and Astonishing Adventures in Foreign Parts (1920), written and illustrated by Hugh Lofting, is the first of his Doctor Dolittle books, a series of children's novels about a man who learns to talk to animals and becomes their champion around the world.Doctor John Dolittle 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.The character 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.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".The original edition of the book included language and plot elements that are considered racist by present-day standards, though probably not intended as malicious by the writer. Some consider that his Black African characters are clearly intended by the writer to be sympathetic, that our modern views tend to assign more meaning where perhaps none was intended.About the Author: Hugh John Lofting (14 January 1886 – 26 September 1947) was a British author, trained as a civil engineer, who created the character of Doctor Dolittle, one of the classics of children's literature.He traveled widely as a civil engineer, before enlisting in the Irish Guards regiment of the British Army to serve in the First World War. Not wishing to write to his children about the brutality of the war, he wrote imaginative letters which later became the foundation of the successful Doctor Dolittle novels for children. Seriously wounded in the war, in 1919 Lofting moved with his family to Killingworth, Connecticut, in the US. He was married three times and had three children, one of whom, his son Christopher, is the executor of his literary estate.

Once upon a time, many years ago - when our grandfathers were little children - there was a doctor, and his name was Dolittle - John Dolittle M.D. Doctor Dolittle likes animals. In fact, he likes them so much he fills his house with every kind of creature imaginable and even learns to talk their language. And when the Doctor hears of a terrible sickness among the monkeys in Africa, soon he and his animal friends are setting off on the most unforgettable adventure...

One of the true classics of children’s literature; Hugh Lofting’s delightful first novel about the eccentric country doctor who learns to talk to the animals and goes on many remarkable adventures with them. Join us for a romp across the seas with Jip the dog, Dab Dab the duck, Polynesia the parrot and human boy Tommy Stubbins as the good doctor saves the day.

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.

In The Story of Doctor Dolittle, the first of Hugh Lofting’s Doctor Dolittle books, we are introduced to the good doctor who gives up treating people after Polynesia, his parrot, teaches him animal languages. His fame in the animal kingdom spreads throughout the world and soon he sets off to cure a monkey epidemic in Africa, finding all sorts of exciting adventures on the way.