My wife was understandably angry that I had gone as far as I had. So did the author, who described them using shallow stereotypes that would once have been charitably referred to as the product of a colonialist worldview, but now would simply be called racist. When I flipped the page and saw the illustration of the king and his wife–their lips and ears oversized, their bodies muscular, yet somehow misshapen–I realized the illustrator saw them as caricatures, not characters. He is captured by the Jolliginki tribe and taken before their leader. Dolittle heads to Africa to help the monkeys overcome a mysterious deadly disease laying waste to their population. Sure, the language seemed stilted by modern standards, but it was an otherwise timeless tale that seemed to be bringing him as much pleasure as it had once brought me.īut then Dr. It was a sweet, sometimes silly saga of doctor who can speak to animals and cures them of their ills. The first few chapters unfolded as I remembered. Recently, I was reading my 4-year-old son a book I loved as a child, Hugh Lofting’s The Story of Doctor Dolittle.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |