The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle was the second of Hugh Lofting's Doctor Dolittle books. The novel is divided into six parts where Doctor Dolittle meets Tommy Stubbins, the young son of a cobbler, who becomes his new assistant. Tommy learns how to speak animal languages and becomes involved in the Doctor's quest to find Long Arrow, the greatest naturalist in the world. The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle takes the reader to the Mediterranean, South America, and even under the sea. Hugh John Lofting was a British author who created the character of Doctor Dolittle - one of the classics of children's literature. His early education was at Mount St Mary's College in Sheffield, after which he went to the United States, completing a degree in civil engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He enlisted in the Irish Guards to serve in World War I. Not wishing to write to his children of the brutality of the war, he wrote imaginative letters that were the foundation of the Doctor Dolittle novels.