My classic children's genre novel for September is somehow one of the best known and best loved such books that I've reviewed thus far and yet one of the least known, because most people seem to know it from one of its many screen adaptations, which are not particularly faithful to the book. I don't have a first edition from 1920, which would be quite the valuable volume, but my copy is an old one, a Jonathan Cape hardback dating back to 1949, so it includes much that's been re-written for more recent reprints, understandably but regrettably so.

I found it a very easy book to read, given that it's told in language for much younger children than perhaps any of my other selections thus far, but it's a shockingly immersive book nonetheless. The writing has a charm to it that's captivating, even when it ventures into problematic territory, and that's why Hugh Walpole's foreword is effusive enough to name it "the first real children's classic since 'Alice'".

Oddly, given how poorly some of this material has dated, John Dolittle, MD, is a character rather outside of time. It's not that he feels modern to 2024 readers, though he's certainly ahead of his time in many ways; it's that he simply doesn't fit in 1920. He starts out as a doctor, one who treats people, but they stop visiting him in the small English village of Puddleby-on-the-Marsh because he's become so enamoured with animals, whom he treats as his friends rather than his pets, that his house is full of them, especially when he adds a crocodile to their number.

Crucially, it isn't merely that he likes animals so much, because that's understandable. It's that he doesn't like people, which might also be understandable but was never going to help his practice. On the very third page of text, his sister Sarah explains to him that "If you go on like this, none of the best people will have you for a doctor." His response is blissfully honest: "But I like the animals better than the 'best people'". And so that's that.

Eventually, the Cats'-Meat Man, who's the only person who still visits the doctor, suggests that he become a vet. And, once his ancient parrot, Polynesia, teaches him how to communicate with the animals, we're off and running. Notably, this isn't through a single language which all animals can speak, but through many of them. He's constantly learning new animal languages and that puts him in good stead for the travels that constitute this initial story, the first of twelve to see print in Hugh Lofting's lifetime and a few more after his death.

In particular, a monkey called Chee-Chee that he rescued from an Italian organ grinder convinces him to travel to Africa because a cousin has told him that the monkeys there are dying from some sort of epidemic. And so off he goes in a borrowed boat, with a core of his animal companions for good measure: Polynesia, Chee-Chee and the unnamed crocodile, along with Jip the dog, itself a likely ethnic slur even if the book doesn't go there; a duck called Dab-Dab, a pig called Gub-Gub and an owl called Too-Too. I presume these simplistic names both cater to very young readers and emphasise the seniority of Polynesia, whose name has four syllables, none of which rhyme.

While there are very cool things happening in Africa, like the Bridge of Arms, the story of a proud lion king and the introduction of the two-headed pushmi-pullyu, which is the rarest animal in the jungle, there's much that's problematic too, so I should drop out of the story for a moment to explain the positives and negatives, as there are plenty of both on show.

On the positive side, I thoroughly appreciate Dolittle liking animals more than people, in fact the best people. We might imagine that such a stance would make him lonely, but he treats animals as friends, so is constantly surrounded by a vibrant social community. I like how this suggests that animals are far from as stupid as we might think. In fact, Polynesia laughs at the arrogance of the human race, pointing out how old it is but how the only thing we've learned about animals is that "when a dog wags his tail he means 'I'm glad!'" Many children's books talk up the intelligence of animals. Few follow up by pointing out how stupid human beings are.

Another positive aspect is that Dolittle doesn't merely shun people, he shuns the structures that people expect, most obviously money. He understands that money buys things but he doesn't see that as particularly important. He goes about his day without any worries about money, whether it's income or expenditure. He's thoroughly free from concerns that plague most of us and that's acutely refreshing. However, he's also scrupulously honest and, after he's cured the monkeys and they want him to stay, he has to explain that he has to go back to England to return the boat that he's borrowed.

A final positive, at least for me, is the fact that the doctor's approach to curing the monkeys is by vaccinating them. He gets the word out and all the monkeys line up for him to be vaccinated. It's all overly simplistic, of course, because this was written for young children, but the point is clear. Even if we don't have Polynesia to teach us the languages of animals, we do have vaccination, an entirely human-created technology that works as well now as it did in Dr. Dolittle's day. Pointing out that many people in America today would see this as political and problematic only serves to back up Polynesia's view of our species.

As if Hugh Lofting was eager to offend both political wings, he hurls out vaccination to upset the right and racial slurs to upset the left. While the story of the proud lion king is a good lesson for young readers to understand, it unfolds with the use of a N word. Not much later, there's use of a C word. No, not that one. The one with racial connotations. We wouldn't dream of using these in 2024 and many new editions of this book remove them, an act of well-meaning censorship that's been approved by Lofting's estate.

The problems here go beyond racial slurs to the general mindset. While Dolittle does everything he can to save the monkeys and that's entirely laudable, as much in 2024 as in 1920, it's also fair to point out that this is a quintessential example of the White Saviour trope. As intelligent as these monkeys are, they can't save themselves from this plague; they need a white man from across the seas to visit them and show them how. It's something that my generation of white English readers probably didn't pay any attention to growing up, but it's there all the same and it's firmly rooted in the colonialist mindset that was pervasive when Lofting wrote 'The Story of Doctor Dolittle'.

By far the most problematic element is still to come and it's one that even my generation would have seen as troubling. To reach the kingdom of the monkeys, the doctor and his companions have to travel through the kingdom of the Jolliginki, whose king refuses to allow any white men to set foot in his lands. Shockingly, this is for good anti-colonial reasons, as he explains to these visitors. "Many years ago a white man came to these shores; and I was very kind to him. But after he had dug holes in the ground to get the gold, and killed all the elephants to get their ivory tusks, he went away secretly in his ship—without as much as saying 'Thank you.'"

So far, so good. However, the art that accompanies this text, drawn by Hugh Lofting himself, is as racist as we might imagine, and the king's son, Prince Bumpo, will later plead with Dr. Dolittle to turn him white. Yes, I just said that. He wants to be turned white because he's an unhappy prince who reads fairy tales and went to find a Sleeping Beauty of his own, but, after tracking her down and kissing her awake, she wouldn't marry him, because "Oh, he's black!" Now, skin whitening is a very real thing in our 21^st-century world, but that doesn't make this scene play any better and Dr. Dolittle's reticence in helping Prince Bumpo doesn't help much either.

And so this is a strange mix of progressive attitudes with a fundamentally racist colonial mindset that makes it a prime candidate for any conversation looking at bowlderising classic literature to make it more palatable to a modern mindset. That's also complicated by the fact that this novel and a few of its sequels are now in the public domain, so can be freely republished and translated, but the cleaned up versions are not, meaning that even the best intentions of the author's estate are inevitably doomed to at least partial failure. I'm almost tempted to track down a new edition to see how they did. ~~ Hal C F Astell