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readallthenewberys2012-09-13 07:11 pm
justice_turtle) wrote in readallthenewberys2012-09-13 07:11 pm
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Newbery Medal: The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle (Hugh Lofting)
Mmm...kay. We get to the first book I've heard of on the list! It is not enticing. ;-)
The edition I have is a brand new Signet Classic, checked out of the library's "Popular" section. I am now side-eyeing the library fairly hard, because I have heard it rumored that the Dr Dolittle books are pretty racist. (I could get into a whole debate over what belongs in a library's "Popular" section, but I won't. Unless people want to start it in comments. *g* I'm always up for polite discussion in comments.)
Me, myself, I've never read this book at all that I know of, and only a couple of excerpts from the first book, The Story of Doctor Dolittle - I know I've read the part where he learns to talk to animals from his parrot and becomes an animal doctor (Ka-ka oi-ee, fee-fee? is Parrot-speak for "Is the porridge hot yet?"; I spent SO MANY hours as a four-year-old trying to parse the syntax there... no wonder I fell in love with The Lord of the Rings at ten, come to think on), and I've read an excerpt about the Pushmi-Pullyu but I couldn't tell you which book it was from. Honestly, I didn't know there was more than one until I started poking around Newbery Medal history and learned that the first book was published the year before the Newberys started.
Looking at some other Newbery reading blogs (I've linked a few on the comm profile now), I suspect I'm going to start running across books I know from excerpts in ancient school readers but have never read in full. Some of the synopses sound very familiar.
But for now - off we go! With *reads back of book* Dr Dolittle and young Tommy Stubbins.
* I'm skipping the Introduction for now, as it isn't by Hugh Lofting. I tend to disagree with introductions put on after a book becomes famous, and (as someone has noted) they also tend to be a red flag for All The Spoilers. So then.
* There is a Prologue, which is by Hugh Lofting, so I read it. The narrator, young Tommy Stubbins ("now" an old man), explains that he did not appear in the first Dolittle book because it took place mostly before he was born, but he's personally involved in this one. His memory isn't so good anymore, so he's been collaborating with Dolittle's parrot - the same who taught the good Doctor to understand Animal; her name is Polynesia, and her memory is perfect though she is now 250 years old.
* Tommy Stubbins, the son of the cobbler in Puddleby-on-the-Marsh (Doctor Dolittle's home town), is nine and a half years old when the book starts. He wishes to be a sailor, and spends a lot of time down by the riverside wharf.
* Tommy has three good friends in Puddleby. There is Joe the mussels-and-lobsters man, who is immensely clever-handed and mends Tommy's toy boats for him and makes other marvellous things like windmills and kites. I want a kite made out of an old umbrella now. :D The writing, so far, is very readable and not a slog; I do wish this will continue good, because my brain is so tired of dreck. :P I did read a review that said Hugh Lofting himself was trying to be activist against racism in whatever he did with black people in these books - he just wasn't excellent at it, especially from a modern POV - so maybe I can get through it.
* Then there is Matthew Mugg, the cat's-meat-man (meat to feed cats and dogs, not meat FROM cats and dogs), who has a bad squint. Tommy says candidly, "He looked rather awful but he was really quite a nice person to talk to." Given the slogs I've been through in previous books, I'm going to take this as it's intended, an effort against ableism. :D I do like Tommy's narrative voice: he sounds like a nine-year-old boy.
* Tommy's third friend is Luke the Hermit, but we don't get to hear details about him until later.
* You know, I've completely forgotten whether Puddleby-on-the-Marsh is in England or America! It does sound like an English town name to my grown-up ear; as a kid I always thought it was in New England, but I can't swear whether that was stated. This digression brought you by Tommy's observation that he does not go to school because his father isn't rich enough to send him, which makes me wonder (1) when this is happening and (2) which country it's in. (And, because I'm still in Investigating History mode, when the free public school system in the US really got its feet under it.) But I'm not going to investigate any of that, because I have had ENOUGH of spending hours on Google and Wiki condensing historical tidbits down for nitpickery purposes. I'm just going to read it as a fun book, like I would have when I was four. (Until I start criticizing social whatsits. *g*)
* Tommy, as was noted, does not go to school, but he is very fond of nature. He mentions bird's-nesting (eep) and blackberrying, fishing and mushroom-hunting and butterfly-catching, and helping Joe mend his nets.
* Tommy scares a hawk that has caught a squirrel, one day, and finds the squirrel still alive but suffering from a broken leg and other injuries. He takes it to Joe to be mended - okay, you know what? It's annoying to trust a book and be screwed over, but it's more annoying to mistrust a book while I'm reading it, and so far I like this book. If it messes up later, so be it.
* Anyway, Tommy wants Joe to help the squirrel. Joe hasn't the expertise, but he recommends Tommy should go to Doctor Dolittle on the other side of town. Also, from Joe's dialect, I'm guessing Puddleby is in England, pending further info.
* So Tommy asks Matthew exactly where Dr Dolittle lives - Joe didn't know - and Matthew shows him the way. Dolittle is away on a voyage at present, Matthew thinks, but he should be back any day now. And Matthew explains (what is not common knowledge in Puddleby, which adds a nice touch of realism, I do think) how Dr Dolittle talks to animals in their own languages. It isn't just one animal language, either; each genus or so has a different language, and currently Dolittle is learning Shellfish, which has given him some bad colds from putting his head underwater so much. XD I like this book. I wish somebody had given it to me as a kidlet - so far. We'll see.
* Jip, Dolittle's dog, takes care of the house and the other animals while the Doctor is away, with the help of Matthew who brings provisions for all of them in brown-paper bags. (The question of who cleans the litter-boxes has not been addressed yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if some of the animals did. I'm starting to remember now - these books are pretty direct predecessors to the Freddy the Pig series by Walter R. Brooks, iirc, although Brooks takes the "if animals are as smart and talkative as humans they can also do anything humans can do" idea a lot farther than I think Lofting does. Around the time Freddy learned to ride a horse, those books shifted into pure fantasy. *g*)
* Jip also has a solid gold dog-collar because of reasons. It'll be interesting if I ever go back and read the first book, to find out which of the stories referenced here have actually been told and which are just thrown in as backstory for what happened in between the books.
* So Tommy takes the squirrel home and makes a bed for it out of straw and takes care of it as well as he can till Dr Dolittle will come home and cure it. I really like the tone of this book so far; I think I would have loved it as a kid. Did I say that already? ;-) (I know I did.)
* A little digression: Tommy takes a pair of shoes his father has cobbled over to a Colonel Bellowes, who rudely tells him to go round to the tradesmen's entrance. He considers throwing the shoes in the flowerbed, but thinks better of it, and gives the shoes in to the Colonel's wife, who seems terrified of the Colonel for very good reason. It's... you know, people can be weird about race when they're quite awesome on other things, but right now Hugh Lofting seems to me like a very nice person and a very good children's writer - telling a story at the right pace and age-level for its intended audience, and throwing in these little sketches of how things really are for kids that age. I keep feeling like seven-or-eight-year-old me would like to write his own review of this book, with plenty of flaily capslock. ;-)
* Anyway, then Tommy goes and checks on Dolittle's house again, because he's worried that his squirrel is going to die before the Doctor turns up. Then he starts to go home, wondering if it's suppertime yet (and also noting that it looks like rain), and he sees the grumpy Colonel coming down the road. So he asks him the time of day, and the Colonel splutters that he is not going to get his overcoat all unbuttoned "just to tell a little boy like you the time!" (Italics original.) And Tommy is wondering how old he WOULD have to be to get the time from the Colonel - oh, I like this book, Hugh Lofting definitely understands kids very well - when the rain comes pouring down in sheets.
* This liveblog is being nearly as long as the book, purely because Lofting doesn't waste words. If he says something, it's needed. SUCH A RELIEF after the last few sloggery slogs. :D Recommended, so far.
* Tommy is running home, head down against the rain, when he cannons smack into Dr Dolittle! At least, he doesn't know who that is yet, but I trust Lofting's pacing, so far. (Yeah - once burned, twice shy, and I've been burned by these books a lot more than once already. ;P)
* Dolittle is not cranky at being knocked down; he begins to laugh and explains how HE once bumped into a woman in India the exact same way, only she was carrying a jar full of treacle and he had sticky hair for weeks! I REALLY WISH I HAD READ THIS BOOK AS A KID OKAY. It's a delight.
* So Dolittle invites Tommy into his house out of the rain, because Tommy's own house is right the other side of town and they're already both soaked. (*pokes William Bowen* See, THIS is how you do it. We now have our little boy and our grown-up protagonist got into the same house and introduced, and it isn't at all creepy! Go away and write your acid trips again, William Bowen, I don't want you in this liveblog anymore. ;P)
* ...and then I went to donate blood and took the book along, but didn't have a hand free to write. So I kind of read over 200 pages without making any notes. :P I'll just go back and remark on the main things that struck me, then.
(Incidentally, do you donate blood regularly if you are able? It's important. You can save people's lives! And boost your karmic balance with the universe! And it's only supposed to take about an hour, although this blood drive was terribly understaffed and I missed my class even though I scheduled in a generous cushion. :P /this has been your public service announcement)
* Here comes Dab-Dab the duck CARRYING a candle in one foot. I told you the animals were fairly capable! XD Dab-Dab is the housekeeper.
* So while Tommy's clothes are drying they cook sausages for dinner, and Dr Dolittle shows Tommy a sea-creature he's found, the "Wiff-Waff" or "Hippocampus pippitopitus", which he hopes can teach him the language of the shellfish. He's specially interested in shellfish language at the moment because he hopes they can tell him things about the ancient days from which we have fossil shells but no other fossil animals. :D *flailyhands* WHICH WOULD BE EPICALLY AWESOME, were it possible really.
* Then after dinner Tommy explains about his squirrel, and Dr Dolittle agrees to come over right away instead of waiting for tomorrow, so the squirrel doesn't feel any worse. :-) And they go off to see to the squirrel, and Dolittle's parrot Polynesia (who was left in Africa, her original home, at the end of the last book) shows up, having flown over the sea to rejoin him. Puddleby-on-the-Marsh is definitely in England, by the way.
* Polynesia the parrot is a most unfortunate... person? I guess she's a person. Anyway, in this chapter she drops both the n-bombs in the book - the white humans stick to "black people" when describing Africans.
* Which happens, because in the African country where Dolittle left the parrot Polynesia and also the monkey Chee-Chee, he was apparently friends with the native King and Prince. (On googling, I find there was a subplot in the first book where the Prince, called Bumpo - not to be confused with Natty Bumppo aka the Deerslayer - wanted to become white in order to find a beautiful wife. Which, um, ick. :P And as far as I can deduce from Polynesia's news of what-happened-after, Bumpo managed to whiten his face but not the rest of him, and to find... I'm going to rephrase this... an albino wife of his own race? With red hair. O_O
(I know that people of African descent with naturally red hair exist, because I sat next to a lady of that description on the bus one day and she explained all about it to her friend across the aisle. It's pretty fascinating. But they don't necessarily have paler skin along with it.)
Anyway, Polynesia describes all this in terribly coarse / politically incorrect terms, and brings also the news that Prince Bumpo is attending university at Oxford, on his father's orders and without any of his seven wives.
* Then the storyline with the squirrel is tied up in brief, with Dolittle splinting its leg and telling a squirrel in his back-garden to inform the injured squirrel's family that it's okay. And Tommy's family - he apparently has a mother, I wasn't aware - meets Dr Dolittle and approves of him as a friend for Tommy, and Dr Dolittle and Tommy's dad make friends over both playing the flute.
* Skimming over the next few chapters - Tommy and Dolittle become great friends, Tommy learns some animal-language from Polynesia the parrot, and eventually Tommy (age 10) proposes to become Dolittle's official assistant in return for being taught how to read and be a naturalist, plus room and board. This is discussed between everybody including Tommy's parents and agreed upon. (If I was reading this at the same time as writing it, I'd be flailing SO MUCH over just how... sensible everyone in this book is. Compared to the other Newbery whatsits so far. I mean, they make sense and they have coherent motivations and they talk to each other like reasonable people of the ages they're supposed to be! And Dolittle points out all these things like how hard it is to make a living as a naturalist, etc etc. He's delightfully realistic.)
* In the middle of that, Chee-Chee arrives from Africa, having stowed away as a little girl by stealing somebody's clothes. O_O So that happened. I don't even know what to say about it.
* Anyway, Tommy becomes Dr Dolittle's assistant and they begin to arrange another voyage of discovery. Tommy's old friend Joe the mussel-man knows of a three-sailor boat they can buy, so they do, but then they need a third man to help sail it, because Tommy counts as a man but Chee-Chee does not. ;-) So they go to see Tommy's third friend, Luke the Hermit, who is also a friend of Dr Dolittle.
AND LUKE ISN'T THERE. I was fairly certain he was going to be dead, for crying out loud! But he isn't. He's been arrested for having killed a man fifteen years ago in South America - that being why he was hermitting in West England in secret, to keep away from the police. Jip the retriever and Bob, Luke's bulldog, both knew the basics but kept the story secret till now; in fact Bob saw the whole thing happen.
You can see where this is going. ;-)
* So, with a nice distribution of detail - Hugh Lofting is REALLY good at pacing, I've not complained of either too-fast or too-slow writing once in the whole book - Dr Dolittle spends the next couple chapters getting Luke acquitted of the murder, by putting Bob on the witness-stand. But then Luke's wife, whom he hasn't seen in fifteen years, shows up to welcome him back, and Dolittle dismisses the idea of taking Luke away on any voyage now! *g*
* I find that the story takes place in the 1830s, as the Peelers or Bobbies have just been instituted.
* Then a purple Bird-of-Paradise, whom Dolittle has been expecting, arrives from Brazil. The first incident in her visit, which I'm pretty sure is intended to be a swipe at racism but winds up having a bit of classist overtone, is that a Cockney sparrow nicknamed "Cheapside" (who visits Dolittle's garden, like other animals from all over England, because DR DOLITTLE IS AWESOME /reasons) yells out at her "You don't belong in an English garden, you ought to be in a milliner's window!", and when scolded, retorts "I don't hold by these gawdy bedizened foreigners nohow. Why don't they stay in their own country?" So... it's a very accurate observation and portrayal of a certain sort of people! o_O It's just that this sparrow is the only character in the book whose class status - as opposed to his race or whatever - is at issue. :P
* The Bird-of-Paradise, named Miranda (i.e. "one to admire" :D), brings the news that the other best naturalist in the world, a Native American whose knowledge rivals Dolittle's (in different spheres, the Native American being primarily a botanist), has disappeared six months ago. Dolittle had hoped to meet this man, Long Arrow, someday, but all that's known of his whereabouts is that he was last seen on "Spidermonkey Island".
* There keep being these lovely little bits of snark, as how Miranda states that most humans are just... "Oh how pretty! and shoot an arrow or a bullet into you". :D Or a bit later on, when Dolittle admits to having reached the North Pole already but explains that he promised to keep it a secret because it's full of coal deposits and the polar bears didn't want their home strip-mined. This is a really good book from an environmental perspective, if... less than accurate scientifically. *coal deposits in the polar icecap, koff koff*
* So Dolittle doesn't intend to set up a rescue mission for Long Arrow, but in planning his next voyage he lets Tommy do the shut-your-eyes-and-point-at-the-world-atlas thing that is his method of deciding where to go, and Tommy randomly hits right on Spidermonkey Island. So, welp, that's where they're going! But it turns out it's a FLOATING island, thus they'll have a little bit of trouble finding it precisely. However, Dolittle is confident he'll arrive safely, because he always has; Polynesia quietly reassures Tommy that the good Doctor really does have the most remarkable luck.
* Then there's a WHOLE lot of getting-the-ship-ready montage wherein a ridiculous number of people offer to come along as the third crew member. The one Dolittle actually accepts is Prince Bumpo, who's positively cringeworthy this early on but (I'll jump ahead and say) mellows considerably once Lofting feels he's been sufficiently established as a character. Bumpo uses ridiculously big words, bad Latin, and so forth, but at certain spots in the book those words are actually quite good portmanteaus that say exactly what Lofting meant to say, and at most times Bumpo is a fairly insightful "noble savage". It's just... I am not going to say Lofting was "of his time", because I'm learning just how bad his time COULD be, but he wasn't sufficiently far enough ahead of his time! :P
* Anyway. Then once they've taken off, it turns out - by degrees - that ALL the people who offered to come along have stowed away on the ship! This is mainly a (very clever, farcical, almost-credible) gimmick to make the voyagers stop in a thinly disguised Madeira Island knockoff, just about penniless, without having to have had them start out insufficiently prepared. :D [See, William Bowen? SEE? Yes, I am going to keep dragging your shade in here by its elbow and poking it mercilessly. Now shoo.]
* And the reason to stop in Madeira - I mean "Capa Blanca" - is technically so that they can restock, if they can figure out how to get some money to do so... but REALLY, from Lofting's point of view, so that Dolittle can set up a wager with the most powerful man on the island and wipe out bullfighting once and for all! :D (And Polynesia and Bumpo cook up a plan behind his back to get some money out of it, so they wind up able to restock quite well.) Dr Dolittle gets really, really ranty about bullfighting and other such cruelties, as makes perfect in-character sense for someone who can TALK TO ANIMALS. :D Look! Good characterization! In a 1920s Newbery! I was beginning to despair. ;P (Okay, I apologize to Padraic Colum. But he's kind of poking characterization in around the edges of an established story, not making it the basis of an original fic. And Cedric et al were more buffeted by fate than directing their courses by having personality.)
* So anyway. They leave not!Madeira in rather a hurry, because they just DELETED BULLFIGHTING for the lifetime of the guy they made the wager with, and the bullfighters are fussed! Then they go and sail for a while, and again Mr Lofting shows his skill at pacing - neither skipping too fast, nor bogging down.
* Then there is a big storm and the ship breaks up! O_O And Tommy winds up tied to the mast on the half of the ship that nobody else is on! ADVENTUR.
* But Polynesia finds him, and brings some dolphins to help push his half of the ship over to where the other half is, and then they all make a raft and the dolphins push that to Spidermonkey Island. Which... suffers from a bit more fail, because once the team have found and rescued Long Arrow, the natives (who were previously very unfriendly) are "oh, okay, you're awesome!" and - it's a long story, but the natives had no fire, and the same storm that wrecked the voyagers' boat has also started to push Spidermonkey Island out of the tropics and toward the antarctic latitudes. So Dolittle teaches them how to make fire and talks some whales into pushing them back to the tropics, and from there on out it's just the white man's burden, culminating in Dolittle being crowned king because he can't figure out how to refuse.
Don't get me wrong, it's still well-written and all, it's just... there's a lot of "childlike natives" and "onoes if I leave they will resume their old unhealthy ways". It's Polynesia the parrot, again, who finally has to cook up a scheme to get them all out of there and back home to Puddleby-on-the-Marsh - and who convinces Dr Dolittle that the natives will get on without him just as they did before. (She does say "not as well as they did WITH you", but... it's still a pretty darn revolutionary sentiment compared to the dreck I've been putting up with. Whaddya know: primitive brown people have survived for thousands of years without your help! THEY CAN KEEP DOING IT. And since you didn't take away their traditional ways of life but only added some new stuff like "hey, if you cook the food and boil the water, it will be healthier"... they won't be in a horrible state without you to baby them, like most indigenous peoples IRL were after getting colonized at.)
* I'm a little dubious about Polynesia, just because she's played very much as the trope of the crusty female housekeeper who has no interest in science and is more concerned about getting the man of science to eat a good meal. (Except she can't cook. ;P) But nobody ever says her crustiness is because she's female or anything like that, in fact I have not identified any outright genderfail in the whole book. There are also no really epic ladies except Polynesia, but - it is a Boys' Adventure genre book, y'know? Hard to fit them in. :P
* So anyway, then there is a Giant Glass-Shelled Snail, who has been foreshadowed quite properly but I didn't drag him in, and who (because biology gives way to COOL STUFF in this book) literally carries his house on his back in such a way that when he isn't tucked into it, it is hollow and people can ride in it like in ayellow submarine. SO THAT'S WHAT TAKES THEM HOME. :D He swims right across the ocean floor with all of the voyagers inside... and because biology AGAIN gives way to cool stuff, nobody dies of anoxia; the air gets a bit stuffy in the shell and gives them headaches, but after two days they get used to it. O_O
* And then they all get home two years after they left Puddleby-on-the-Marsh, and just in time for tea. ^_^ It's kind of darling.
So there you have it! Insensitive in spots, definitely colonial, but so much better than most other things I've read from this list I can't even.
The edition I have is a brand new Signet Classic, checked out of the library's "Popular" section. I am now side-eyeing the library fairly hard, because I have heard it rumored that the Dr Dolittle books are pretty racist. (I could get into a whole debate over what belongs in a library's "Popular" section, but I won't. Unless people want to start it in comments. *g* I'm always up for polite discussion in comments.)
Me, myself, I've never read this book at all that I know of, and only a couple of excerpts from the first book, The Story of Doctor Dolittle - I know I've read the part where he learns to talk to animals from his parrot and becomes an animal doctor (Ka-ka oi-ee, fee-fee? is Parrot-speak for "Is the porridge hot yet?"; I spent SO MANY hours as a four-year-old trying to parse the syntax there... no wonder I fell in love with The Lord of the Rings at ten, come to think on), and I've read an excerpt about the Pushmi-Pullyu but I couldn't tell you which book it was from. Honestly, I didn't know there was more than one until I started poking around Newbery Medal history and learned that the first book was published the year before the Newberys started.
Looking at some other Newbery reading blogs (I've linked a few on the comm profile now), I suspect I'm going to start running across books I know from excerpts in ancient school readers but have never read in full. Some of the synopses sound very familiar.
But for now - off we go! With *reads back of book* Dr Dolittle and young Tommy Stubbins.
* I'm skipping the Introduction for now, as it isn't by Hugh Lofting. I tend to disagree with introductions put on after a book becomes famous, and (as someone has noted) they also tend to be a red flag for All The Spoilers. So then.
* There is a Prologue, which is by Hugh Lofting, so I read it. The narrator, young Tommy Stubbins ("now" an old man), explains that he did not appear in the first Dolittle book because it took place mostly before he was born, but he's personally involved in this one. His memory isn't so good anymore, so he's been collaborating with Dolittle's parrot - the same who taught the good Doctor to understand Animal; her name is Polynesia, and her memory is perfect though she is now 250 years old.
* Tommy Stubbins, the son of the cobbler in Puddleby-on-the-Marsh (Doctor Dolittle's home town), is nine and a half years old when the book starts. He wishes to be a sailor, and spends a lot of time down by the riverside wharf.
* Tommy has three good friends in Puddleby. There is Joe the mussels-and-lobsters man, who is immensely clever-handed and mends Tommy's toy boats for him and makes other marvellous things like windmills and kites. I want a kite made out of an old umbrella now. :D The writing, so far, is very readable and not a slog; I do wish this will continue good, because my brain is so tired of dreck. :P I did read a review that said Hugh Lofting himself was trying to be activist against racism in whatever he did with black people in these books - he just wasn't excellent at it, especially from a modern POV - so maybe I can get through it.
* Then there is Matthew Mugg, the cat's-meat-man (meat to feed cats and dogs, not meat FROM cats and dogs), who has a bad squint. Tommy says candidly, "He looked rather awful but he was really quite a nice person to talk to." Given the slogs I've been through in previous books, I'm going to take this as it's intended, an effort against ableism. :D I do like Tommy's narrative voice: he sounds like a nine-year-old boy.
* Tommy's third friend is Luke the Hermit, but we don't get to hear details about him until later.
* You know, I've completely forgotten whether Puddleby-on-the-Marsh is in England or America! It does sound like an English town name to my grown-up ear; as a kid I always thought it was in New England, but I can't swear whether that was stated. This digression brought you by Tommy's observation that he does not go to school because his father isn't rich enough to send him, which makes me wonder (1) when this is happening and (2) which country it's in. (And, because I'm still in Investigating History mode, when the free public school system in the US really got its feet under it.) But I'm not going to investigate any of that, because I have had ENOUGH of spending hours on Google and Wiki condensing historical tidbits down for nitpickery purposes. I'm just going to read it as a fun book, like I would have when I was four. (Until I start criticizing social whatsits. *g*)
* Tommy, as was noted, does not go to school, but he is very fond of nature. He mentions bird's-nesting (eep) and blackberrying, fishing and mushroom-hunting and butterfly-catching, and helping Joe mend his nets.
* Tommy scares a hawk that has caught a squirrel, one day, and finds the squirrel still alive but suffering from a broken leg and other injuries. He takes it to Joe to be mended - okay, you know what? It's annoying to trust a book and be screwed over, but it's more annoying to mistrust a book while I'm reading it, and so far I like this book. If it messes up later, so be it.
* Anyway, Tommy wants Joe to help the squirrel. Joe hasn't the expertise, but he recommends Tommy should go to Doctor Dolittle on the other side of town. Also, from Joe's dialect, I'm guessing Puddleby is in England, pending further info.
* So Tommy asks Matthew exactly where Dr Dolittle lives - Joe didn't know - and Matthew shows him the way. Dolittle is away on a voyage at present, Matthew thinks, but he should be back any day now. And Matthew explains (what is not common knowledge in Puddleby, which adds a nice touch of realism, I do think) how Dr Dolittle talks to animals in their own languages. It isn't just one animal language, either; each genus or so has a different language, and currently Dolittle is learning Shellfish, which has given him some bad colds from putting his head underwater so much. XD I like this book. I wish somebody had given it to me as a kidlet - so far. We'll see.
* Jip, Dolittle's dog, takes care of the house and the other animals while the Doctor is away, with the help of Matthew who brings provisions for all of them in brown-paper bags. (The question of who cleans the litter-boxes has not been addressed yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if some of the animals did. I'm starting to remember now - these books are pretty direct predecessors to the Freddy the Pig series by Walter R. Brooks, iirc, although Brooks takes the "if animals are as smart and talkative as humans they can also do anything humans can do" idea a lot farther than I think Lofting does. Around the time Freddy learned to ride a horse, those books shifted into pure fantasy. *g*)
* Jip also has a solid gold dog-collar because of reasons. It'll be interesting if I ever go back and read the first book, to find out which of the stories referenced here have actually been told and which are just thrown in as backstory for what happened in between the books.
* So Tommy takes the squirrel home and makes a bed for it out of straw and takes care of it as well as he can till Dr Dolittle will come home and cure it. I really like the tone of this book so far; I think I would have loved it as a kid. Did I say that already? ;-) (I know I did.)
* A little digression: Tommy takes a pair of shoes his father has cobbled over to a Colonel Bellowes, who rudely tells him to go round to the tradesmen's entrance. He considers throwing the shoes in the flowerbed, but thinks better of it, and gives the shoes in to the Colonel's wife, who seems terrified of the Colonel for very good reason. It's... you know, people can be weird about race when they're quite awesome on other things, but right now Hugh Lofting seems to me like a very nice person and a very good children's writer - telling a story at the right pace and age-level for its intended audience, and throwing in these little sketches of how things really are for kids that age. I keep feeling like seven-or-eight-year-old me would like to write his own review of this book, with plenty of flaily capslock. ;-)
* Anyway, then Tommy goes and checks on Dolittle's house again, because he's worried that his squirrel is going to die before the Doctor turns up. Then he starts to go home, wondering if it's suppertime yet (and also noting that it looks like rain), and he sees the grumpy Colonel coming down the road. So he asks him the time of day, and the Colonel splutters that he is not going to get his overcoat all unbuttoned "just to tell a little boy like you the time!" (Italics original.) And Tommy is wondering how old he WOULD have to be to get the time from the Colonel - oh, I like this book, Hugh Lofting definitely understands kids very well - when the rain comes pouring down in sheets.
* This liveblog is being nearly as long as the book, purely because Lofting doesn't waste words. If he says something, it's needed. SUCH A RELIEF after the last few sloggery slogs. :D Recommended, so far.
* Tommy is running home, head down against the rain, when he cannons smack into Dr Dolittle! At least, he doesn't know who that is yet, but I trust Lofting's pacing, so far. (Yeah - once burned, twice shy, and I've been burned by these books a lot more than once already. ;P)
* Dolittle is not cranky at being knocked down; he begins to laugh and explains how HE once bumped into a woman in India the exact same way, only she was carrying a jar full of treacle and he had sticky hair for weeks! I REALLY WISH I HAD READ THIS BOOK AS A KID OKAY. It's a delight.
* So Dolittle invites Tommy into his house out of the rain, because Tommy's own house is right the other side of town and they're already both soaked. (*pokes William Bowen* See, THIS is how you do it. We now have our little boy and our grown-up protagonist got into the same house and introduced, and it isn't at all creepy! Go away and write your acid trips again, William Bowen, I don't want you in this liveblog anymore. ;P)
* ...and then I went to donate blood and took the book along, but didn't have a hand free to write. So I kind of read over 200 pages without making any notes. :P I'll just go back and remark on the main things that struck me, then.
(Incidentally, do you donate blood regularly if you are able? It's important. You can save people's lives! And boost your karmic balance with the universe! And it's only supposed to take about an hour, although this blood drive was terribly understaffed and I missed my class even though I scheduled in a generous cushion. :P /this has been your public service announcement)
* Here comes Dab-Dab the duck CARRYING a candle in one foot. I told you the animals were fairly capable! XD Dab-Dab is the housekeeper.
* So while Tommy's clothes are drying they cook sausages for dinner, and Dr Dolittle shows Tommy a sea-creature he's found, the "Wiff-Waff" or "Hippocampus pippitopitus", which he hopes can teach him the language of the shellfish. He's specially interested in shellfish language at the moment because he hopes they can tell him things about the ancient days from which we have fossil shells but no other fossil animals. :D *flailyhands* WHICH WOULD BE EPICALLY AWESOME, were it possible really.
* Then after dinner Tommy explains about his squirrel, and Dr Dolittle agrees to come over right away instead of waiting for tomorrow, so the squirrel doesn't feel any worse. :-) And they go off to see to the squirrel, and Dolittle's parrot Polynesia (who was left in Africa, her original home, at the end of the last book) shows up, having flown over the sea to rejoin him. Puddleby-on-the-Marsh is definitely in England, by the way.
* Polynesia the parrot is a most unfortunate... person? I guess she's a person. Anyway, in this chapter she drops both the n-bombs in the book - the white humans stick to "black people" when describing Africans.
* Which happens, because in the African country where Dolittle left the parrot Polynesia and also the monkey Chee-Chee, he was apparently friends with the native King and Prince. (On googling, I find there was a subplot in the first book where the Prince, called Bumpo - not to be confused with Natty Bumppo aka the Deerslayer - wanted to become white in order to find a beautiful wife. Which, um, ick. :P And as far as I can deduce from Polynesia's news of what-happened-after, Bumpo managed to whiten his face but not the rest of him, and to find... I'm going to rephrase this... an albino wife of his own race? With red hair. O_O
(I know that people of African descent with naturally red hair exist, because I sat next to a lady of that description on the bus one day and she explained all about it to her friend across the aisle. It's pretty fascinating. But they don't necessarily have paler skin along with it.)
Anyway, Polynesia describes all this in terribly coarse / politically incorrect terms, and brings also the news that Prince Bumpo is attending university at Oxford, on his father's orders and without any of his seven wives.
* Then the storyline with the squirrel is tied up in brief, with Dolittle splinting its leg and telling a squirrel in his back-garden to inform the injured squirrel's family that it's okay. And Tommy's family - he apparently has a mother, I wasn't aware - meets Dr Dolittle and approves of him as a friend for Tommy, and Dr Dolittle and Tommy's dad make friends over both playing the flute.
* Skimming over the next few chapters - Tommy and Dolittle become great friends, Tommy learns some animal-language from Polynesia the parrot, and eventually Tommy (age 10) proposes to become Dolittle's official assistant in return for being taught how to read and be a naturalist, plus room and board. This is discussed between everybody including Tommy's parents and agreed upon. (If I was reading this at the same time as writing it, I'd be flailing SO MUCH over just how... sensible everyone in this book is. Compared to the other Newbery whatsits so far. I mean, they make sense and they have coherent motivations and they talk to each other like reasonable people of the ages they're supposed to be! And Dolittle points out all these things like how hard it is to make a living as a naturalist, etc etc. He's delightfully realistic.)
* In the middle of that, Chee-Chee arrives from Africa, having stowed away as a little girl by stealing somebody's clothes. O_O So that happened. I don't even know what to say about it.
* Anyway, Tommy becomes Dr Dolittle's assistant and they begin to arrange another voyage of discovery. Tommy's old friend Joe the mussel-man knows of a three-sailor boat they can buy, so they do, but then they need a third man to help sail it, because Tommy counts as a man but Chee-Chee does not. ;-) So they go to see Tommy's third friend, Luke the Hermit, who is also a friend of Dr Dolittle.
AND LUKE ISN'T THERE. I was fairly certain he was going to be dead, for crying out loud! But he isn't. He's been arrested for having killed a man fifteen years ago in South America - that being why he was hermitting in West England in secret, to keep away from the police. Jip the retriever and Bob, Luke's bulldog, both knew the basics but kept the story secret till now; in fact Bob saw the whole thing happen.
You can see where this is going. ;-)
* So, with a nice distribution of detail - Hugh Lofting is REALLY good at pacing, I've not complained of either too-fast or too-slow writing once in the whole book - Dr Dolittle spends the next couple chapters getting Luke acquitted of the murder, by putting Bob on the witness-stand. But then Luke's wife, whom he hasn't seen in fifteen years, shows up to welcome him back, and Dolittle dismisses the idea of taking Luke away on any voyage now! *g*
* I find that the story takes place in the 1830s, as the Peelers or Bobbies have just been instituted.
* Then a purple Bird-of-Paradise, whom Dolittle has been expecting, arrives from Brazil. The first incident in her visit, which I'm pretty sure is intended to be a swipe at racism but winds up having a bit of classist overtone, is that a Cockney sparrow nicknamed "Cheapside" (who visits Dolittle's garden, like other animals from all over England, because DR DOLITTLE IS AWESOME /reasons) yells out at her "You don't belong in an English garden, you ought to be in a milliner's window!", and when scolded, retorts "I don't hold by these gawdy bedizened foreigners nohow. Why don't they stay in their own country?" So... it's a very accurate observation and portrayal of a certain sort of people! o_O It's just that this sparrow is the only character in the book whose class status - as opposed to his race or whatever - is at issue. :P
* The Bird-of-Paradise, named Miranda (i.e. "one to admire" :D), brings the news that the other best naturalist in the world, a Native American whose knowledge rivals Dolittle's (in different spheres, the Native American being primarily a botanist), has disappeared six months ago. Dolittle had hoped to meet this man, Long Arrow, someday, but all that's known of his whereabouts is that he was last seen on "Spidermonkey Island".
* There keep being these lovely little bits of snark, as how Miranda states that most humans are just... "Oh how pretty! and shoot an arrow or a bullet into you". :D Or a bit later on, when Dolittle admits to having reached the North Pole already but explains that he promised to keep it a secret because it's full of coal deposits and the polar bears didn't want their home strip-mined. This is a really good book from an environmental perspective, if... less than accurate scientifically. *coal deposits in the polar icecap, koff koff*
* So Dolittle doesn't intend to set up a rescue mission for Long Arrow, but in planning his next voyage he lets Tommy do the shut-your-eyes-and-point-at-the-world-atlas thing that is his method of deciding where to go, and Tommy randomly hits right on Spidermonkey Island. So, welp, that's where they're going! But it turns out it's a FLOATING island, thus they'll have a little bit of trouble finding it precisely. However, Dolittle is confident he'll arrive safely, because he always has; Polynesia quietly reassures Tommy that the good Doctor really does have the most remarkable luck.
* Then there's a WHOLE lot of getting-the-ship-ready montage wherein a ridiculous number of people offer to come along as the third crew member. The one Dolittle actually accepts is Prince Bumpo, who's positively cringeworthy this early on but (I'll jump ahead and say) mellows considerably once Lofting feels he's been sufficiently established as a character. Bumpo uses ridiculously big words, bad Latin, and so forth, but at certain spots in the book those words are actually quite good portmanteaus that say exactly what Lofting meant to say, and at most times Bumpo is a fairly insightful "noble savage". It's just... I am not going to say Lofting was "of his time", because I'm learning just how bad his time COULD be, but he wasn't sufficiently far enough ahead of his time! :P
* Anyway. Then once they've taken off, it turns out - by degrees - that ALL the people who offered to come along have stowed away on the ship! This is mainly a (very clever, farcical, almost-credible) gimmick to make the voyagers stop in a thinly disguised Madeira Island knockoff, just about penniless, without having to have had them start out insufficiently prepared. :D [See, William Bowen? SEE? Yes, I am going to keep dragging your shade in here by its elbow and poking it mercilessly. Now shoo.]
* And the reason to stop in Madeira - I mean "Capa Blanca" - is technically so that they can restock, if they can figure out how to get some money to do so... but REALLY, from Lofting's point of view, so that Dolittle can set up a wager with the most powerful man on the island and wipe out bullfighting once and for all! :D (And Polynesia and Bumpo cook up a plan behind his back to get some money out of it, so they wind up able to restock quite well.) Dr Dolittle gets really, really ranty about bullfighting and other such cruelties, as makes perfect in-character sense for someone who can TALK TO ANIMALS. :D Look! Good characterization! In a 1920s Newbery! I was beginning to despair. ;P (Okay, I apologize to Padraic Colum. But he's kind of poking characterization in around the edges of an established story, not making it the basis of an original fic. And Cedric et al were more buffeted by fate than directing their courses by having personality.)
* So anyway. They leave not!Madeira in rather a hurry, because they just DELETED BULLFIGHTING for the lifetime of the guy they made the wager with, and the bullfighters are fussed! Then they go and sail for a while, and again Mr Lofting shows his skill at pacing - neither skipping too fast, nor bogging down.
* Then there is a big storm and the ship breaks up! O_O And Tommy winds up tied to the mast on the half of the ship that nobody else is on! ADVENTUR.
* But Polynesia finds him, and brings some dolphins to help push his half of the ship over to where the other half is, and then they all make a raft and the dolphins push that to Spidermonkey Island. Which... suffers from a bit more fail, because once the team have found and rescued Long Arrow, the natives (who were previously very unfriendly) are "oh, okay, you're awesome!" and - it's a long story, but the natives had no fire, and the same storm that wrecked the voyagers' boat has also started to push Spidermonkey Island out of the tropics and toward the antarctic latitudes. So Dolittle teaches them how to make fire and talks some whales into pushing them back to the tropics, and from there on out it's just the white man's burden, culminating in Dolittle being crowned king because he can't figure out how to refuse.
Don't get me wrong, it's still well-written and all, it's just... there's a lot of "childlike natives" and "onoes if I leave they will resume their old unhealthy ways". It's Polynesia the parrot, again, who finally has to cook up a scheme to get them all out of there and back home to Puddleby-on-the-Marsh - and who convinces Dr Dolittle that the natives will get on without him just as they did before. (She does say "not as well as they did WITH you", but... it's still a pretty darn revolutionary sentiment compared to the dreck I've been putting up with. Whaddya know: primitive brown people have survived for thousands of years without your help! THEY CAN KEEP DOING IT. And since you didn't take away their traditional ways of life but only added some new stuff like "hey, if you cook the food and boil the water, it will be healthier"... they won't be in a horrible state without you to baby them, like most indigenous peoples IRL were after getting colonized at.)
* I'm a little dubious about Polynesia, just because she's played very much as the trope of the crusty female housekeeper who has no interest in science and is more concerned about getting the man of science to eat a good meal. (Except she can't cook. ;P) But nobody ever says her crustiness is because she's female or anything like that, in fact I have not identified any outright genderfail in the whole book. There are also no really epic ladies except Polynesia, but - it is a Boys' Adventure genre book, y'know? Hard to fit them in. :P
* So anyway, then there is a Giant Glass-Shelled Snail, who has been foreshadowed quite properly but I didn't drag him in, and who (because biology gives way to COOL STUFF in this book) literally carries his house on his back in such a way that when he isn't tucked into it, it is hollow and people can ride in it like in a
* And then they all get home two years after they left Puddleby-on-the-Marsh, and just in time for tea. ^_^ It's kind of darling.
So there you have it! Insensitive in spots, definitely colonial, but so much better than most other things I've read from this list I can't even.