2 DECEMBER 1922, Page 18

DOCTOR DOLITTLE. Written and illustrated by Hugh Lofting. (Cape. 6s.

net.)

A more delightfully fantastic book cannot be imagined. Both in the story and the illustrations Mr. Lofting walks in that perilous region just within the borders of the ridiculous. Dr. Dolittle is most lovably eccentric. He loses all his patients because they sit on the hedgehog and tread on the baby pi he keeps in his consulting-rooms. So he becomes an animal doctor, learns the animallanguage, and when a plague breaks out among the monkeys in Africa he sails to the rescue with his household of strange pets. What absurdities are crammed 4-ito this bare carcase the reader must discover for himself. This is a book that wise uncles will buy for solemn- nieces and nephews, and, if they are wise, read first themselves.