Doctor Dolittle's garden is teeming with insects. So the Doctor decides to learn the insect languages and soon hears lots of fascinating stories. None is more fascinating than the tale of the giant moths, and the doctor starts to plan a trip to seek them out. But before he can set off, he is amazed by the arrival of one of these moths. What is the reason for the moth's visit?

The Hugh Lofting Doctor Dolittle stories are classics that stand the test of time. I really enjoy them and find them clever and enjoyable. I think the writing can be seen as a bit dated but I think it's still extremely readable. ( )

Ex-lib. Dicken School library (Ann Arbor) ( )

This is a slightly strange Dr. Doolittle book, a bit disjointed and a non-ending, but containing lots of entertainingly told stories within. The book comprises roughly three different themes, although it's allegedly divided into four parts.

The first part of the book tells about a club for crossbred dogs and has several of them telling stories after dinner about their lives. It's quite entertaining.

Then, leaving the dogs behind, Dr. Doolittle becomes obsessed with learning the language of insects, so he contrives an apparatus for doing that, and eventually manages to learn some insect stories, particularly one about a water beetle who was transported in a clod of mud on a duck's foot over to Brazil, and eventually a few years later, back again.

Somewhere in the story telling, Dr. Doolittle hears rumors of giant moths, so quizzes his animal and insect friends for more information about them. Then, quite suddenly, a giant moth shows up in his garden. So they spend the last third of the book (roughly) learning to communicate with the moth, trying to keep the public away, wondering about where to go on a new voyage and whom to take, and so forth.

This story is told through the eyes of Thomas Stubbins who has become Dr. Doolittle's assistant somewhere after Dr. Doolittle's Circus and before the present book (two volumes that I seem to have missed in my current re-reading of the series). I've always thought the primary fun in the Dr. Doolittle books were the little stories that the animals tell each other within the confines of the major plot themes.
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