Review by Booklist Review
K-Gr. 2. This attractive book from the Let's-Read-and-Find-Out Science series discusses the sounds made by dolphins. Pfeffer draws parallels between people's words and dolphins whistles, human babies' gurgles and baby dolphins' chirps, human mothers' warning words and dolphin mothers' scolding movements. Besides relating the wide range of sounds dolphins make, the author also describes how the sounds are made, their use in echolocation, and a variety of underwater noises made by whales. Davie's paintings portray the world beneath the waves with particular grace and surprising variety. The book closes with an excellent two-page diagram showing a dolphin's interior organs and bone structure. An inviting addition to science collections. --Carolyn Phelan Copyright 2003 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 1-2-Beginning readers will enjoy this introductory title on dolphin communication. In addition to the creatures' use of clicks, whistles, and squeaks, the book explains how they use movements to send messages and echolocation to locate objects in the water. Pfeffer does a great job of keeping the concept understandable and comparing human and animal communication, but children may have some difficulty reading the text against the few dark pages. Davie's watercolor illustrations are pleasant and upbeat. The final spread with a labeled cross section of a dolphin is particularly informative.-Sandra Welzenbach, Villarreal Elementary School, San Antonio, TX (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
(Primary) These contributions to the Let's-Read-and-Find-Out Science series elegantly convey the basics of dolphin and worm anatomy, behaviors, and life cycles in straightforward, child-appropriate language. Dolphin Talk concentrates on communication. To make a difficult concept clearer for children, Pfeffer introduces each of the dolphin communicative behaviors with a comparable human behavior that children will likely be familiar with, such as moms calling out warnings when children are in danger. It can be challenging to describe sound in writing, but Pfeffer uses analogies admirably, for example: ""These dolphin sounds are made like the sounds you make when you stretch the neck of a balloon between your fingers and then let the air escape slowly."" Worms is filled with similarly clear explanations of worms, their habits, and their habitats. Pfeffer takes an ecological perspective in this book, relating worms' activities to their effects on the environment (in particular, soil quality and plant growth). Both books end with activity extensions. The Wiggling Worms activities in particular are outstanding, encouraging children to observe worms and to conduct simple controlled experiments to investigate soil quality. The worm activities are important for readers because Jenkins's cut-paper illustrations, while lovely and generally accurate, are interpretive, and include only a few anatomical details (and none of internal organs). Davie's sleek illustrations for Dolphin provide important details; especially helpful are diagrams of dolphin insides and pictorial explanations of echolocation. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A Stage 2 entry in the Let's-Read-and-Find-Out series seeks to explain the mysteries of dolphin communication. Drawing parallels between human and dolphin interactions, Pfeffer describes dolphin vocabulary and the circumstances under which particular noises and gestures are made. Clear watercolors picture dolphins in diagram and in their natural environment; the varying angles and perspectives keep the blue-green sameness of palette from becoming boring. The text sticks narrowly to its topic, shining in its description of echolocation and its observations about dolphin behavior. It falls down, however, in its explanation of the "hows" of dolphin communication. Although it carefully discusses the role of cranial air sacs in the creation of dolphin vocalization, it's largely mute on the function of the "melon" (carefully labeled in more than one diagram) in the production or reception of sound, leaving a big question mark for curious readers. That there is very little else that goes into such detail on the subject for the age group makes this lack of explanation particularly frustrating; it also makes this, despite its flaws, a reasonable purchase. (Picture book/nonfiction. 5-9) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
