Hello, my name is Finn, and I'm going to help you understand this book.
Here it is, explained like you are 10:
Doctor Dolittle is a kind doctor who can talk to animals, because he learned their languages. Birds can fly fast and far, so the Doctor has a smart idea: let the birds carry letters, like a post office in the sky. Swallows fly the letters between faraway lands, and the other birds help sort them. Between trips, the animals tell the Doctor their own stories, and every creature has something worth hearing.
Doctor Dolittle is staying in Fantippo, a kingdom in West Africa, when he notices a problem. Letters travel slowly, but birds fly fast and far, and nobody has ever asked the birds to help. So the Doctor starts a post office for animals and people alike, with swallows as the letter carriers and all the birds helping to sort and deliver.
The book is built in two layers. On top is the post office itself: how it is planned, how the swallows are organized, and what goes wrong and right. Underneath, between deliveries, the animals tell the Doctor stories of their own, so the book keeps changing between adventure and fireside tales. Hugh Lofting also drew the pictures himself, and the Dolittle stories began as letters to his children during a war.
It works because the idea is simple and wonderful: the fastest messengers in the world were flying overhead all along, waiting to be asked. The Doctor's kindness is his genius, he listens to every creature, and the book trusts that you will too. It is gentle, funny, and full of small inventions that feel just right.
The third outing for Doctor Dolittle, the kindly doctor who learned the languages of animals, begins with a simple problem: the birds are the fastest messengers alive, and nobody has ever organized them. So the Doctor, staying in the West African kingdom of Fantippo, builds them a postal service, with swallows carrying letters between continents. Between deliveries the animals tell stories of their own, and the book becomes half adventure, half fireside tale collection.
Doctor Dolittle, the kindly doctor who learned the languages of animals, begins his third book with a simple problem: the birds are the fastest messengers alive, and nobody has ever organized them. Staying for a while in the West African kingdom of Fantippo, the Doctor builds the birds a postal service, with swallows carrying letters between continents and a whole avian system of sorting and delivery. Between deliveries the animals tell stories of their own, and the book becomes half adventure and half fireside tale collection, carried along by Hugh Lofting's gentle confidence that kindness is a kind of genius.
Starvard shelves Doctor Dolittle's Post Office as the third Dolittle book, after The Story of Doctor Dolittle and The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle, written and illustrated by Lofting himself. The stories began in letters he sent his children from the trenches of the First World War, and their warmth is undimmed here. A note in honesty: like other fiction of its period, the book reflects some dated attitudes toward Africa and its peoples. Readers who love talking animals, ingenious animal inventions, and gentle humor will still find the Doctor's company a pleasure.
Edition: Text: Project Gutenberg ebook 58947.
The first chapter
PUBLISHED BY R A STOKES CO. AT
442 FOURTH AV.
NEW YORK
Copyright, 1923, by
Frederick A. Stokes Company
All rights reserved, including that of
translation into foreign languages
Printed in the United States of America
"It was mournful scenery"
Source: Project Gutenberg. Published 1923. Author died 1947. Public domain in the US. Share this book: WhatsApp
Starvard