• Complete, ready to use!
• Book included inside the course!
• Makes reading fun!
• Develops literacy, vocabulary!
• Introduces some history, geography!
• Develops critical thinking!

"If I could talk to the animals...”

The author, Hugh Lofting, started to write about a lovable, gentle doctor who learns to care for and talk to animals while he himself was fighting in a terrible war. He wrote tales about this British country doctor whose best friends are a parrot, a pig, a dog, an alligator... all of whom speak to him as he and they travel the world having fantastic adventures. What child (or adult) could resist?

Here's a truly complete guide that will help your student, ages 7-adult, understand this book as few readers ever do. (Some younger children can be walked through the story with some help, though younger than 7 should probably skip most of the exercises and materials outside of the book itself, and just focus on reading skills. This book is particularly well suited to use for students who are starting to, or who are developing early literacy!)

The history of the period of time is explained, so that the student understands why Lofting wrote the book, and what he was trying to say to his readers about their time (and ours). Lofting's personal history is also explored, and the student relates what he's learned about Lofting's life to the story, and how Lofting's own experience helped to create this masterpiece. The history of the book itself, its publishing successes is considered.

Important devices in writing are explored and explained, such as the message of a piece (the idea the author wishes to communicate and earn agreement for), plotting, characterization, conflict, language, irony, the use of surrogates (characters representing the author and his/her point of view within the story), and other tools. New understandings of the tools of good story-telling are then used by the student to analyze and understand the story.

No additional materials are needed. The entire book is contained in the course, broken into chapters.

Before reading each chapter, the student looks though the simple, single definition that applies, for every key or difficult word used in that chapter. This will allow the student to understand what he reads the first time he reads it. Locations mentioned in each chapter are also listed before the reading starts, and they are located by the student on maps or globes. In this way, the student will know where those places are in the world when encountering them in the story.

After each reading section, the student is provided numerous exercises which demand cognitive and critical thinking on the student's part. The exercises help make the story more relevant to the student, and increase his understanding of the story and its unique values.

We even provide some links to film and/or other presentations of the piece being studied!

This is a complete study guide, one that will bring this great work to life, and which should help interest the student in literature. (By the way, older students are likely to enjoy the book, as well!)