Dolphin Baby!: Read and Wonder

I’ve been reading this book to my daughter for two to three years now. We love it!

The illustrations are beautiful, and this book is informative and entertaining.

Great library book!

Kids love book

Dolphin is born into a world full of the love and security of his Mom. She is his protector: teaching him how to breathe, where to swim, how to talk, and how to fish. She is his nurturer: feeding him thorough her nipples and stroking him with her flippers.The reader swims along with Dolphin as he grows. We delight when he learns to play with friends and to practice clicking. And we celebrate the day when he is old enough to catch a fish and to whistle his own special name.Young readers will enjoy hearing this story and watching Dolphin grow. As he matures and spends more time away from Mom, all is well. Her security is always 'just a whistle away'.Brita Granstrom's illustrations pulsate with the color and energy of wild dolphins.Back matter provides information about bottlenose dolphins that parents and educators will appreciate. The index provides independent readers a way to practice its usage.

I'm a school librarian but I really didn't know much about Nicola Davies until the literacy coordinator at my school started raving about what a great writer she is. With all that, I still never took the time to read one of her books until Dolphin Baby appeared at my door as one of the Cybils nominees.Wow. What a great story. How did the author do it? Page one and suddenly I was a baby dolphin, swimming along with my mother.Davies tells the story just right, mixing cool facts ("Every dolphin has one whistle that's its own....") as sidebars to the story of the day-by-day life of a little dolphin. The dolphin is enough like the child reader that he can identify with the dolphin and yet different enough to intrigue him with his other-ness.I love the voice of Davies in this book, a voice that sounds like she is right here with the child as he reads along, sharing info that will help the child read through all the hard parts.Brilliant.

My daughter loves dolphins. Loves loves loves them. So Grandma sent her this book for the holidays. It starts with the baby dolphin being born, that makes sense. The illustration of birth is too graphic for me to show my child at this age. I do not want to have to explain the *how* of "How do babies come out?" I am putting the book into the basement and I will give it too her when I am ready to tell here where babies come out of bodies.

Bought this because whale story is one of my daughters favourite bedtime reads. While this is okay, it just does not have that little bit of magic that Whale story has.

I purchased this book because I like to teach concepts through stories... this story was a little weak on its actual story though. The book is nicely illustrated and demonstrates some key concepts about dolphin life from birthing to catching food, but it's story is quite boring. There are many fiction books that depict animal life through exciting text - this isn't one of them. My kids rarely choose this book, although fortunately they did learn (and were curious) about dolphins having live births from its graphically illustrated pictures :)