TO
   ALL CHILDREN
   CHILDREN IN YEARS AND CHILDREN IN HEART
   I DEDICATE THIS STORY

    There are
           some of us now
          reaching middle age
         who discover themselves
              to be
                  lamenting the
                       past in one respect
         if in none other,
           that there are no books
               written now
                   for children comparable
                 with those
                       of thirty years ago.

    I say written FOR children
         because the new
             psychological
                business of writing ABOUT
                   them as
         though they
            were small pills or
                 hatched in
                       some especially scientific method
                is extremely popular today.

    Writing for children
         rather than about them
            is very difficult as everybody
             who has tried it knows.

    It can only be done,
           I am convinced,
         by somebody
            having a great deal
                   of the child
              in his own outlook
                 and sensibilities.

    Such was the author of
         "The Little Duke"
            and "The Dove
               in the Eagle's Nest,"
                   such the author
                       of "A Flatiron
               for a Farthing,"
                   and "The Story
                       of a Short Life."

    Such,
           above all,
         the author of
           "Alice in Wonderland."

    Grownups imagine
         that they
            can do the trick
                   by adopting baby language and
                  talking down
                       to their very critical audience.

    There never
        was a greater mistake.

    The imagination of the author
        must be a child's imagination
               and yet maturely consistent,
           so that
               the White Queen in
         "Alice,"
            for instance,
         is seen
              just as a child
            would see her,
         but she
            continues always herself
                   through all her distressing adventures.

    The supreme touch
           of the white rabbit
          pulling on
               his white gloves as
         he hastens
            is again
                  absolutely the child's vision,
           but the white rabbit
               as guide
                   and introducer of Alice's adventures
            belongs to mature grown insight.

    Geniuses are rare and,
           without being
               at all an undue praiser
                   of times past,
         one can say
             without hesitation that
               until the appearance
                   of Hugh Lofting,
           the successor of Miss Yonge,
         Mrs. Ewing,
           Mrs. Gatty and Lewis Carroll
            had not appeared.

    I remember the delight
         with which
               some six months ago
             I picked up the first
         "Dolittle"
            book in the Hampshire bookshop
               at Smith College in Northampton.

    One of Mr. Lofting's pictures
        was quite enough for me.

    The picture
         that I lighted upon
           when I first
              opened the book
            was the
                   one of the monkeys
                  making a chain
                       with their arms
                     across the gulf.

    Then I looked
           further and discovered Bumpo
              reading fairy stories to himself.

    And then looked again
        and there was a picture
               of John Dolittle's house.

    But pictures are not enough
         although most authors
               draw so badly that
             if one of them happens
                  to have the genius
                       for line
                 that Mr. Lofting shows there
                    must be,
           one feels,
         something in
               his writing as well.

    There is.

    You cannot read
           the first paragraph
         of the book,
           which begins
               in the right way
         "Once upon a time"
            without knowing
             that Mr. Lofting
                believes in his story quite
             as much as
                 he expects you to.

    That is the first essential
           for a story teller.

    Then you
          discover as you read on
         that he
            has the right
                   eye for the right detail.

    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