Hugh John Lofting was an English American writer, trained as a civil engineer, who created the classic children's literature character Doctor Dolittle. The fictional physician to talking animals, based in an English village, first appeared in illustrated letters to his children which Lofting sent from British Army trenches in the First World War. Lofting settled in the United States soon after the war and before his first book was published.
Lofting in 1935
The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle
Children's literature or juvenile literature includes stories, books, magazines, and poems that are created for children. Modern children's literature is classified in two different ways: genre or the intended age of the reader, from picture books for the very young to young adult fiction.
A mother reads to her children, depicted by Jessie Willcox Smith in a cover illustration of a volume of fairy tales written in the mid to late 19th century.
The Adventures of Pinocchio (1883) is a canonical piece of children's literature and one of the best-selling books ever published.
Newbery's A Little Pretty Pocket-Book, originally published in 1744
A woodcut of the eponymous Goody Two-Shoes from the 1768 edition of The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes. It was first published in London in 1765.
