Doctor Dolittle's Garden (Puffin Story Books)

Doctor Dolittle's Garden follows Lofting's Doctor Dolittle's Zoo. Tommy Stubbins, Dolittle's assistant, reports on Professor Quetch, curator of the Dog Museum. Meanwhile, the doctor has learned insect languages and hears ancient tales of a giant race of insects. Fascinated, the doctor plans a voyage to find them - but before he does so, one arrives in his garden. Hugh John Lofting was a British author who created the character of Doctor Dolittle - one of the classics of children's literature. His early education was at Mount St. Mary's College in Sheffield, after which he went to the United States, completing a degree in civil engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He enlisted in the Irish Guards to serve in World War I. Not wishing to write to his children of the brutality of the war, he wrote imaginative letters that were the foundation of the Doctor Dolittle novels.