The Story of Doctor Dolittle

The Story of Doctor Dolittle by Hugh Lofting is a fun, cute, and quick story about a people doctor turned animal doctor who can talk with animals. He and his wide range of pets go on a trip to Africa and back and go from rich to poor to rich to poor to rich again. The only problem with the book is some racist bits and also a derogatory word for a black person used in a derogatory way toward a lion by a lioness (even keeping in mind it was written almost 100 years ago, seeing that in a children’s book was upsetting – when choosing an edition to read, I’d strongly recommend picking a revised version instead).

An interesting read--and very much of its own time. This is the source and root of the musical you loved as a child. Be forewarned that the racist views of Colonial England are well in tact, so read ahead before putting your little ones to bed with this otherwise charming book.

There was a lot of description and the events were exciting. It would be wonderful to have the one of a kind ability to communicate to animals. My favorite part was when hip was saying everything he smelled when trying to find the boys uncle. I do wish the author included the boy's name. I'm interested to find out.

Wonderful! Wonderful! Wonderful! Opens up a whole new world of relationships among humans and animals, world of imagination, and world of humor and wonder. It seems every human would benefit from reading this book. If you haven't gotten for your child, grandchild, niece or nephew, you may want to do so, or just read it yourself.

This IS NOT the original version- it has been stripped of several chapters.
I love Dr. Dolittle, but this book has been modified to appease the PC police. BOO!

This version is missing the chapters "The Black Prince" and "Medicine and Magic".

They did it to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and have done the same thing to Dr. Dolittle.

The book that we received had many illustrations that were essentially just black boxes taking up half the page, and other illustrations were very dark and hard to distinguish. Did not have this problem with other Doctor Doolittle books that we received at the same time.

We bought this version and the sentences and words are combined together at times. I thought the annotated version would be helpful, but it is not worth trying to have your child read words that have no spaces to separate them. I am going to try the free version.