![]() ![]() Dolittle wasn’t the first book in the series-that would be The Story of Dr. It was the 1918 version of telling bedtime stories to your kids via Zoom. Not wanting to be completely absent from his children’s lives, yet also not wanting to fill his letters with horrors of war and his own convalescence, he invented an eccentric English doctor who could talk to animals, sending dispatches of his adventures back home to be read in absentia. Imagine not seeing your kids for three years, knowing that you’re missing out on their formative years and are likely to return to them as a complete stranger. In 1916, the American-based Englishman joined the British army and spent months in combat before being wounded in France, after which he spent another two years in service before being discharged. ![]() ![]() World War I got in the way of that reality for Hugh Lofting. Though I’m not a father yet, one of the things I most look forward to is being able to conjure that same sense of wonder and exploration with my own children, inventing stories to charm them to sleep. Some nights they’d get lost in the woods and chased by hooting owls, other nights they’d be traipsing through farm gardens and getting fat on corncobs. ![]() Ricky and Rachel Raccoon were the brother/sister duo my dad dreamed up for me at bedtime every night as a kid. The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle by Hugh Lofting ![]()
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May 2023
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