The Story of Doctor Doolittle

'Once upon a time, many years ago - when our grandfathers were little children - there was a doctor; and his name was Dolittle - John Dolittle, M.D. "M.D." means that he was a proper doctor and knew a whole lot.
He lived in a little town called, Puddleby-on-the-Marsh. All the folks, young and old, knew him well by sight. And whenever he walked down the street in his high hat everyone would say, "There goes the Doctor!-He's one clever man." And the dogs and the children would all run up and follow behind him; and even the crows that lived in the church-tower would caw and nod their heads.'

This is the beginning of The Story of Doctor Dolittle written by Hugh Lofting. My edition was published in 1948 and given to me by my sister last summer, along with another book in the Dolittle series. She knows that I have a love for the old hardback classics whether they be young readers or adult novels.
I read this book for the What's In a Name 2 book challenge. It fit rather nicely right into the book with a profession in it's title category.
Until my sister gave me these books, I had never even considered reading Doctor Dolittle, but now I'm glad I have. They are really fun stories, full of the adventures of the Doctor who can speak to animals. When the story begins, Doctor Dolittle is a very good people doctor who has many pets. His parrot, Polynesia, begins to teach him all the animal languages of the world. His office is in his house and as he acquires more and more pets, he starts loosing his clients until he has none left and becomes very poor. Polynesia suggests that the good doctor become an animal doctor since he can communicate with them so well. He takes her advice and soon becomes the best animal doctor around, with more and more animals wanting to live with him until a crocodile takes up residence in his goldfish pond. Now the farmers and little old ladies no longer want to bring their pets and farm-stock as they are afraid that the crocodile will eat them up, so the Doctor is once again without patients and very very poor again. This starts his adventures in the open-ocean, that includes pirates and monkeys. It's a very fun story, one I'm glad that this challenge prompted me to take off of my shelves and read.

Happy reading to you!