The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle is a high-seas adventure of exploration, shipwreck, derring-do, and of course, talking animals. The animals talk because Doctor Dolittle is no ordinary doctor. He has learned the secret of animal language, and uses his talents to help out his friends in the animal world. Now nine-year-old Tommy Stubbins, the son of a shoemaker, has the opportunity to become Dolittle's assistant, and join him on his journeys. Together with their animal companions they will travel to the strange Spidermonkey Island and beyond, in search of a colleague who has gone missing. The second of Hugh Lofting's Doctor Dolittle series, The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle was awarded the prestigious Newbery Medal for children's fiction.

The charming story of Pippinella, the green canary, as told by Pip herself to the Doctor.

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE THIRD CHAPTER MORE MONEY TROUBLES ND soon now the Doctor began to make money again; and his sister, Sarah, bought a new dress and was happy. Some of the animals who came to see him were so sick that they had to stay at the Doctor's house for a week. And "They used to sit in chairs on the lawn" when they were getting better they used to sit in chairs on the lawn. And often even after they got well, they did not want to go away?they liked the Doctorand his house so much. And he never had the heart to refuse them when they asked if they could stay with him. So in this way he went on getting more and more pets. Once when he was sitting on his garden wall, smoking a pipe in the evening, an Italian organ- grinder came round with a monkey on a string. The Doctor saw at once that the monkey's collar was too tight and that he was dirty and unhappy. So he took the monkey away from the Italian, gave the man a shilling and told him to go. The organ-grinder got awfully angry and said that he wanted to keep the monkey. But the Doctor told him that if he didn't go away he would punch him on the nose. John Dolittle was a strong man, though he wasn't very tall. So the Italian went away saying rude things and the monkey stayed with Doctor Do- little and had a good home. The other animals in the house called him "Chee-Chee"? which is a common word in monkey-language, meaning "ginger." And another time, when the circus came to Puddleby, the crocodile who had a bad toothache escaped at night and came into the Doc- tor's garden. The Doctor talked to him in crocodile-language and took him into the house and made his tooth better. But when the crocodile saw what a nice house it was?with all the different places for the different kinds of animals?he too wanted to live with t...

Purchase one of 1st World Library's Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. Visit us online at www.1stWorldLibrary.ORG - - 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.

Purchase one of 1st World Library's Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. Visit us online at www.1stWorldLibrary.ORG - - ALL that I have written so far about Doctor Dolittle I heard long after it happened from those who had known him - indeed a great deal of it took place before I was born. But I now come to set down that part of the great man's life which I myself saw and took part in. Many years ago the Doctor gave me permission to do this. But we were both of us so busy then voyaging around the world, having adventures and filling note-books full of natural history that I never seemed to get time to sit down and write of our doings.