Dolphin Baby, Nicola Davies, Candlewick, 2012
Format: Picture Book
Rating: 1-5 (5 is excellent or a Starred review) 4
Genre: Non-fiction
What did you like about the book? The beautiful blues of the illustrations by Brita Granstrom immediately draw one into the world of a dolphin baby and its mother. The information in the book is presented in a manner that makes it move along like a story book. It begins: “Tail first, head last, Dolphin POPS out into the blue.” Additional information is presented in a smaller and different font: “Baby dolphins are born one at a time and are called calves.” In this way, one could choose whether or not to read the additional facts. The book includes and index and concludes with the factual “Taking Care of Dolphins” thus making this suitable for non-fiction reports for younger elementary school students. This beautiful book could be used for story times and for non-fiction information doubling it’s usefulness in the collection.
What didn’t you like about the book? Nothing.
To whom would you recommend this book? I would recommend this book to parents looking for non-fiction picture books. The information would also be useful for lower elementary non-fiction book reports.
Who should buy this book? Public and lower elementary school libraies.
Where would you shelve it and why? This one is tricky as it can read as both a picture book and be used for non-fiction reports. It could reasonably be shelved in either the picture book or non-fiction section. In my library, due to the inclusion of an index and the fact that students have a non-fiction animal project every year, I would shelf this in non-fiction.
Should we (librarians) put this on the top of our “to read” piles? Yes.
Reviewer’s Name, Library (or school), City: Catherine Coyne, The Ames Free Library, Easton
Date of review: 6/6/12
