Doctor Dolittle in the Moon Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)The movie musical version of "Doctor Dolittle" was on cable this weekend, and after cringing a bit at Rex Harrison's portrayal of the Doctor (about as faithful to the book as Julie Andrews was to P.L. Travers's original Mary Poppins), I pulled down several of my Hugh Lofting classics to remember why I loved these books so much. You probably know the general story: the adventures of an English animal doctor who learns the language of the animals. All of these books are great (start with "The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle" or "The Story of Doctor Dolittle") but "Doctor Dolittle in the Moon" was always my favorite as a kid, and I'm please to say it holds up extraordinarily well reading it in my late thirties! The adventure is continued in part from the previous book, "Doctor Dolittle's Garden," but you don't have to read that book at all to get right into the action: the good doctor is already on his way to the moon, on the back of a giant moth (it's not as silly as it sounds), along with faithful companions the parrot Polynesia and the monkey Chim-Chim--plus a stowaway, the Doctor's protégé and apprentice, Tommy Stubbins. They discover on the moon's dark side a fantastic world of giant--and talking--plants, weird creatures, and the mythical, millenniums-old Man in the Moon. I'm not *at all* doing justice to this--the setting is moody, spooky, even a little chilling, and always exciting--in my mind, no juvenile author has portrayed an alien world so well until Eleanor Cameron's "Mushroom Planet" books. It astonishes me how far ahead of his time Lofting was; I had to glance at the copyright page and actually check that it was published in 1928. I don't mean that he was prescient in what the moon is actually like (Lofting's moon is a weird but lush, living landscape), but his themes and ideas in this book were far beyond most of the books I read as a kid, and must have been revolutionary for juvenile lit in 1928: the ideas of evolution, the extraordinarily precarious balance of nature (and how a man who can talk to the animals and plants can help bring justice and fairness to their society), and even a reflection by the Doctor on man's inhumanity to man--and why he prefers the company of animals. The science is fantastic but believable: Lofting's imaginative speculation on the low atmosphere and gravity of the moon, and how the plants and animals have evolved to compensate, is one of the highlights. This book entertained and thrilled me as a kid, and I'm pleased to say it did so as an adult as well. Sadly, it's currently out of print. I can definitely see fans of the Harry Potter adventures also enjoying Doctor Dolittle...it's time for a savvy publisher to make the entire series available again for a new generation. (And the Mushroom Planet books by Eleanor Cameron, too, while you're at it!)

Click Here to see more reviews about: Doctor Dolittle in the Moon

Contents: 1. WE LAND UPON A NEW WORLD2. THE LAND OF COLOURS AND PERFUMES3. THIRST!4. CHEE-CHEE THE HERO5. ON THE PLATEAU6. THE MOON LAKE7. TRACKS OF A GIANT8. THE SINGING TREES9. THE STUDY OF PLANT LANGUAGES10. THE MAGELLAN OF THE MOON11. WE PREPARE TO CIRCLE THE MOON12. THE VANITY LILIES13. THE FLOWER OF MANY SCENTS14. MIRRORS FOR FLOWERS15. MAKING NEW CLOTHES16. MONKEY MEMORIES OF THE MOON17. WE HEAR OF "THE COUNCIL"18. THE PRESIDENT19. THE MOON MAN20. THE DOCTOR AND THE GIANT21. HOW OTHO BLUDGE CAME TO THE MOON22. HOW THE MOON FOLK HEARD OF DOCTOR DOLITTLE23. THE MAN WHO MADE HIMSELF A KING24. DOCTOR DOLITTLE OPENS HIS SURGERY ON THE MOON25. PUDDLEBY ONCE MORE a selection from Chapter 1 --WE LAND UPON A NEW WORLD: In writing the story of our adventures in the Moon I, Thomas Stubbins, secretary to John Dolittle, M.D. (and son of Jacob Stubbins, the cobbler of Puddleby-on-the-Marsh), find myself greatly puzzled. It is not an easy task, remembering day by day and hour by hour those crowded and exciting weeks. It is true I made many notes for the Doctor, books full of them. But that information was nearly all of a highly scientific kind. And I feel that I should tell the story here not for the scientist so much as for the general reader. And it is in that I am perplexed. For the story could be told in many ways. People are so different in what they want to know about a voyage. I had thought at one time that Jip could help me; and after reading him some chapters as I had first set them down I asked for his opinion. I discovered he was mostly interested in whether we had seen any rats in the Moon. I found I could not tell him. I didn't remember seeing any; and yet I am sure there must have been some-or some sort of creature like a rat. Then I asked Gub-Gub. And what he was chiefly concerned to hear was the kind of vegetables we had fed on. (Dab-Dab snorted at me for my pains and said I should have known better than to ask him.) I tried my mother. She wanted to know how we had managed when our underwear wore out-and a whole lot of other matters about our living conditions, hardly any of which I could answer. Next I went to Matthew Mugg. And the things he wanted to learn were worse than either my mother's or Jip's: Were there any shops in the Moon? What were the dogs and cats like? The good Cats'-meat-Man seemed to have imagined it a place not very different from Puddleby or the East End of London. No, trying to get at what most people wanted to read concerning the Moon did not bring me much profit. I couldn't seem to tell them any of the things they were most anxious to know. It reminded me of the first time I had come to the Doctor's house, hoping to be hired as his assistant, and dear old Polynesia the parrot had questioned me. "Are you a good noticer?" she had asked. I had always thought I was-pretty good, anyhow. But now I felt I had been a very poor noticer. For it seemed I hadn't noticed any of the things I should have done to make the story of our voyage interesting to the ordinary public.--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Click here for more information about Doctor Dolittle in the Moon