What child-inquiring mind could resist this intriguing sentence to be found on the second page of the book:
"Besides the gold-fish in the pond at the bottom of his garden, he had rabbits in the pantry, white mice in his piano, a squirrel in the linen closet and a hedgehog in the cellar."
And then when you read a little further you will discover that the Doctor is not merely a peg on whom to hang exciting and various adventures but that he is himself a man of original and lively character.
He is a very kindly, generous man, and anyone who has ever written stories will know that it is much more difficult to make kindly, generous characters interesting than unkindly and mean ones.
But Dolittle is interesting.
It is not only that he is quaint but that he is wise and knows what he is about.
The reader, however young, who meets him gets very soon a sense that if he were in trouble, not necessarily medical, he would go to Dolittle and ask his advice about it.
Dolittle seems to extend his hand from the page and grasp that of his reader, and I can see him going down the centuries a kind of Pied Piper with thousands of children at his heels.
But not only is he a darling and alive and credible but his creator has also managed to invest everybody else in the book with the same kind of life.
Now this business of giving life to animals, making them talk and behave like human beings, is an extremely difficult one.