The Story of Doctor Dolittle

Many months ago, I ordered our Sonlight K curriculum of books. I bought most of them for a fraction of the cost on Amazon.  Others were given to the girls as gifts for their birthday.  We’ve been breezing through much of our books and enjoying this year’s emphasis on World Cultures.  I know, who would have thought?  World Cultures at age 5!  Anyway, each book takes us somewhere new and covers many different time periods.  It’s been a wonderful way to incorporate a bit of geography as well.  At this rate, we’ll be done with all the K Readers well before the end of the year!  Going at our own pace is just one of the many benefits of homeschooling, I suppose. 

Another great benefit is the fact that I get to experience classic stories like Doctor Dolittle for the first time with my children.  Originally published in 1920 by Hugh Lofting, it’s a story filled with high adventure, excitement, suspense, and compassion.  We flew through 156 pages in 3 days.  We often laughed out loud and the girls couldn’t wait to turn the page.  They kept asking, “Just one more chapter please!”    

The story starts off in a fictional village in Britain and then sets sail to the jungles of Africa.  Dr. Dolittle is a miserable failure as a human doctor but learns he has a gift to communicate with animals.  His animals love him for his caring and generous spirit and teach him to be an outstanding animal doctor.  He doesn’t care about losing all his money and all he wants to do is help save monkeys in Africa from an epidemic.  With friends like Jip the dog, Gub Gub the pig, and Polynesia the parrot, the wild and crazy adventures of Dr. Dolittle kept our imaginations rolling!   

We’ll definitely be reading this one again and again…