War is not Healthy for Children and Other Living Things

Ten million is an enormous number, almost impossible to comprehend, especially in the context of World War I, when it was estimated that ten million soldiers died. Great Britain lost three quarters of a million young men. The brutality of the war, with its trenches and heavy artillery, was well-documented. Steven Spielberg has captured the horror in War Horse, a movie as brutal as it is beautiful. There is a scene in the movie in which hundreds of British mounted cavalry soldiers charge into a line of German machine guns. You see the soldiers riding towards the guns, you see the guns firing, and then you see hundreds of horses continuing to gallop ahead, riderless. There are more horrific battle scenes as well, told through the perspective of a horse. Joey, the titular War Horse, also spends some time on the German side, which allows the filmmaker to show the humanity and inhumanity on both sides. It is also thought that ten million horses were killed in the war. As the mother of two animal lovers, one of whom is an accomplished horsewoman herself, it was hard to watch scenes were horses are treated as expendable tools of war.

What do War Horse and World War I have to do with my first two Newbery books? First, thinking of this cataclysmic war made me feel more charitable toward the Van Loon Story of Mankind, which was written shortly after the war ended. I think the author did a good job trying to have some perspective on this event.

Surprisingly, there is an even stronger connection between World War I and its horses and The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle, the second winner of the Newbery Medal. The author, Hugh Lofting, served in World War I. as a member of the Irish guards. He was in the trenches at the front lines and saw the same horrific events that are depicted in War Horse. Lofting did not want to describe the horrors of war in letters home to his wife and young children and so he created the character of Doctor Dolittle and his ability to talk to animals. The stories in these letters formed the foundation of his Doctor Dolittle series. Lofting also said that he had been so impressed by the behavior of the horses and mules who served in the war that he invented Doctor Dolittle to do for them what was not done for them in the war.

Hugh Lofting created Doctor Dolittle’s imaginary world as an escape from the horrors of war. It is also a pretty nice retreat from the annoyances of daily life.