The Voyages Of Doctor Dolittle (2005) - Plot & Excerpts
My mother read this book to my brother and me when we were children in the 1960s. I remember loving the story and, especially, being enamored of Dr. Dolittle's ability to talk with the animals. It became controversial in the 1970s when the portrayal of the African characters was considered to be offensive and racist. The version I recently re-read is the lightly edited version by the McKissacks to remove the offending descriptions and illustrations. It does not, however, remove the rather offensive portrayal of Native Americans as childlike people who don't even have fire and are happily civilized by Dolittle to the point of complete dependency. However, Dolittle's adventures with the native folk of a floating island consists of a great part of the voyages of the book's title, making it rather difficult to have them edited out without significantly shortening and changing the book. And, of course, the colonialist attitude toward native people was very endemic to the times and one that we are only now finally starting to shake off. Despite this troubling aspect, I still found the same delight I had as a child in the portrayal of the doctor who could talk with animals and in the description of his home and garden filled with animals. I especially enjoyed (and had forgotten) the description of Dr. Dolittle as a fat, funny little man. The movie musical with Rex Harrison that came out during my childhood had unfortunately replaced a very different image of the doctor in my memory. I was very distressed, however, with the many scenes of Dr. Dolittle happily cooking and eating sausages and bacon while surrounded by his talking animal friends (including a pig!). Surely, if anything was to make one a vegetarian, it would be the ability to actually communicate with animals! And even if one was barbaric enough to still eat (cousins of) one's friends, surely one would have the courtesy to do so out of sight of those friends and not have them participate in the very cooking and serving of the meal! Other than the distressing consumption of animal flesh, I did enjoy re-visiting Dr. Dolittle and his friends in the first two or three sections of the book. I would have difficulty with reading it aloud to young children today due to the portrayal of Native Americans though it could lead to some very interesting discussions when read with older children. Like many of the Newbery books from the first decade, however, I think it needs to be put in context for modern children -- a better teaching book than a pleasure book.
The book, "Voyages of Doctor Dolittle," is a real page turner. The main characters are a nine-and-a-half year old named Tommy Stubbins, (but Doctor Dolittle calls him Stubbins) who is a boy who lives in Puddleby, a small town. He learned how to become a naturalist, so he can speak to animals. The next main character is of course, John Dolittle, a quite big man who is a naturalist and can speak to almost every animal in their own language, but he really wants to learn shellfish language, a language he does NOT know. The other important characters are Polynesia, (a bird) Chee-Chee, (a monkey) Bumpo, (Doctor Dolittle's good friend, Human) Long Arrow, (Indian) and much more fascinating characters. It all started when Tommy Stubbins found a squirrel being attacked by a hawk, so he took the squirrel to a mussel man's hut, and figured that the squirrel had a broken leg! So a mussel man who knew him recommended seeing John Dolittle, the naturalist. There is a guy named Matthew Mugg, and he is the one who led Stubbins to the Doctor's house. After Stubbins watched to see what the Doctor did as a naturalist, he decided that he wanted to become a naturalist! He also really wanted to learn how to read and write, since his family couldn't afford school, so he thought that the Doctor can teach him! The Doctor already planned on going on a voyage, so Stubbins' parents were really hesitant to say yes, so they agreed that Tommy can stay and live with the Doctor for two years. Tommy got to randomly pick which voyage to go on, and he ended choosing Spider Monkey Island to go to. It included a lot of stress including a man who ate a lot of their food, meeting a fidget, a huge storm that split the boat in half, and then meeting Indians (on SMI) who tried to attack them because they didn't know who they were. At last, they found Long Arrow, a person they wanted to meet for SO LONG! They found the world's rarest beetle, a jabizri, who led the way to Long Arrow, the son of Golden Arrow, (who he was trying to find, but ended up meeting Long Arrow) who was trapped inside a mountain. Soon, they had a little war because weird people called the Bag-jagderags came to attack them. The doctor also got crowned King! I like this book because it has such funny, imaginative creatures with animals that talk! And Doctor Dolittle understands them! This book is really good for fiction lovers! :) It also has SO much action and it leaves you on the edge of your seat!
What do You think about The Voyages Of Doctor Dolittle (2005)?
Proto-Peta, early environmentalist, anti-colonialist - if you've only seen the movies, you're in for a taste of something different (a touch of the radical?) when you read the books. Voyages isn't the best of the Dolittle books (even though it won the Newbery) but it's certainly never dull. 90 years ago, if you were some little farm boy on the Kansas prairie, winter wind blowing outside, then the adventures of a vet who could talk to animals, his voyages fraught with danger and shipwreck, and one of his trusting companions a nine year old boy - it must have been marvelous. Quite frankly, it still is. There is a marvelously far thinking passage where the doctor talks about discovering the North Pole long before anyone else - but the polar bears convince him to keep it a secret because people will come and ruin it all. The polar bears were right all along, weren't they?
—Shawn Thrasher
Far and away one of my favorite series when I was young, the Doctor Dolittle books don't bear up so well with time. We are more aware of the implicit racism in characterizations of Africans and South American Indians in this book, and the attempt to bowdlerize the books to make them more palatable to today's inclusive atmosphere don't completely succeed in their own purpose and undermine the novel as a whole. But worst, while the central idea of the series, of a man who can talk to animals, remains intriguing, in this particular instance, at least, the execution seems to be a bit dull, too slow in getting to the real action. There's also a bit of misdirection in the title - the promised "Voyages" turn out to be just a single voyage.
—Waller
I have fond memories of watching Disney’s version of Doctor Dolittle as a child. The music is catchy, and the adventures were so grand. Plus, how cool would it be to talk to the animals? A few yeas ago my sister gifted me the book, which is when I realized, I had never actually read this classic story. I put it on my shelf to eventually be read, and just never got around to it. I finally started reading it to my kids as their bedtime story. I’ve found the enjoy real people movies (as I call them) more, if they’ve read/heard the book first.So we finished the book this week, and I was surprised at many of the differences between book and movie (that shouldn’t have surprised me right). When we made our weekly library trip, we were very excited to find Disney’s Doctor Dolittle just waiting for us in the DVD section.My kids have been just as captivated with the movie as I was. They have even pointed out some of the things that are different between book and movie – yay, they were actually listening to me read! We’re only halfway through the movie since it is a long one, but we’ll be finishing it up tonight. Off to find the great Glass Sea Snail!
—Adelina
