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Did you ever wish that you could understand what a beloved pet was saying to you? Did you ever wish that you could talk to animals? Many fairy tales have a theme of some kind of magic seed or fruit that allows you to understand, and be understood by, forest animals. Hugh Lofting, in his Doctor Dolittle series, which are definitely not written as fairy tales, has taken this concept and run with it, all the way through thirteen novels. His hero, Doctor Dolittle, is a doctor who found that he liked taking care of animals better than he did taking care of people, especially since he also found that he could talk to animals and they could understand him. What is more, they could talk to him and he could understand them! Different animals spoke different languages, so that he had to learn various languages but he picked them up quickly. The entire series is set in England around 1830.
The first book, published in 1920, was The Story of Doctor Dolittle, which introduces the good doctor, his home in Puddleby-on-the-Marsh, England, and his closest animal friends including Gub Gub the pig, Jip the dog, Polynesia the wise 200-year-old parrot who teaches the Doctor his first animal languages, Chee-Chee the monkey, and Dab-Dab the duck. Of course, many other animal characters, some quite rare and unusual, enter into the books over time, along with a few human friends.
Hugh Lofting (1886 to 1947) is considered to be an English-American, since he was born in England, graduated in civil engineering from MIT in Massachusetts, and emigrated with his family to the United States after World War I. Lofting first started writing about the adventures of the good Doctor in illustrated letters to his children, sent from the British Army trenches in World War I, where Lofting was serving. He didn’t want his children to know about the grim conditions of trench warfare, so he invented Doctor Dolittle. The first book in the series was published after he settled in America, so we can claim him as a writer all to ourselves!
The second book in the series, The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle, won the Newbery Award in 1922 and is a fantastic book. Altogether, there are thirteen novels in this series, all in the Plumfield Library. Lofting moved on from there, chronicling the adventures of the Doctor in England and abroad, in post offices, circuses, zoos (a very different sort of zoo), and even traveling to the moon! I’ll let you find out for yourself the wonders of Doctor Dolittle and the imagination of Hugh Lofting. In order of publication (1920 to 1952), the thirteen titles are: The Story of Doctor Dolittle, The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle, Doctor Dolittle's Post Office, Doctor Dolittle's Circus, Doctor Dolittle's Zoo, Doctor Dolittle's Caravan, Doctor Dolittle's Garden, Doctor Dolittle in the Moon, Gub Gub's Book, Doctor Dolittle's Return, Doctor Dolittle and the Secret Lake, Doctor Dolittle and the Green Canary, and Doctor Dolittle's Puddleby Adventures. This is not exactly the precise internal chronology but that doesn’t really matter for reading enjoyment. Thirteen may be, in Western culture anyway, an unlucky number but it is much the opposite of unlucky to have so many books to enjoy! One can wonder twelve times “then what happened” before running out of titles.
I’ll mention one more title, one of the last Lofting wrote, Doctor Dolittle and the Secret Lake. In this book, Doctor Dolittle meets an ancient, giant turtle, whose memory goes back before the Great Flood. This turtle informs the Doctor that Noah could also talk to animals, a God-given ability that no doubt helped Noah greatly in rounding up the animals and keeping them alive on the Ark! Lofting doesn’t follow the account in Genesis exactly, but Secret Lake is a work of fiction, after all.