Doctor Dolittle's Garden

Doctor Dolittle's Garden is structurally the most disorganised of Hugh Lofting's Doctor Dolittle books. The first part would fit very well into Doctor Dolittle's Zoo, which this book follows. The rest of the book forms a reasonably coherent narrative. Doctor Dolittle's assistant, Tommy Stubbins, reports on Professor Quetch, curator of the Dog Museum in the Home for Crossbred Dogs. Meanwhile, the doctor has learnt insect languages and hears ancient tales of a giant race of insects. Fascinated, the doctor plans a voyage to find them - but before he does so, one arrives in his garden. Hugh John Lofting was a trained as a civil engineer and author who created the character of Doctor Dolittle; one of the classics of children's literature. Hugh Lofting's doctor from Puddleby-on-the-Marsh who could speak to animals first saw light in the author's illustrated letters to children, written from the trenches during World War I when actual news, he later said, was either too horrible or too dull. Eight more books followed, and after Lofting's death two more volumes, composed of short unpublished pieces, appeared. The series has been adapted for film and television many times, for stage twice, and for radio.