Tommy Stubbins, a cobbler’s son in Puddleby-on-the-Marsh, becomes assistant to the great naturalist John Dolittle, learns animal languages from Polynesia the parrot, and joins a voyage to find the lost naturalist Long Arrow. The journey takes in a bullfight in Spain, a shipwreck and a floating island, all told by Tommy as an old man.
It won the Newbery Medal in 1923, though some passages carry the racial attitudes of its day. Download the free EPUB.