Marine Life Books

My son really loves this book! The rhyme and rhythum of the book are fun and colorful. I read one sentence and the next line my son has memorized. This is a book easy for a toddler to love! I highly recommend this book.

A Charming, colorful, easy to read book for children. In this day when children need education and guidance in how to help protect our environment and the animals and reptiles that inhabit our world,this book is a great starting point.

This book is a treasure. The illustrations are glorious depictions of natural Hawaii. The book is wonderful, interesting reading about the Hawaiian islands and how people came to be here, and also for its sweet story about a young boy befriending an animal. Like all of Rumford's books, kids will love it for the story and the great illustrations, and parents will enjoy reading (and rereading) it too because he adds so much interesting, historical information along the way and in endnotes. Anyone with any interest in Hawaii at all should have this book in their collection (child OR adult). I highly recommend it.

I just love these books. My girls love to click and clack along with the story.

I really enjoyed this book. It's about Dr. Ridgway's personal experience with dolphins as he and the team attempted to determine if the natural behaviors of the dolphins could be adopted for work with Naval security. The book is often funny, sometimes dramatic and always fascinating. He writes in such a way that I felt I was there working with them. It's hard to believe it was 40 - 50 years ago now. It'e easy to read and I think older children would enjoy it as well.

This is a very good book about a man who befriends some dolphins and helps to rescue them from poachers. There are more books - Dolphin Adventures & Dolphin Treasures. I recommend this book for students in grades 2 - 4.

In all my reading on cetaceans, this is by far the most comprehensive, science-oriented book I've ever found. Ms. Pryor and the late Dr. Norris are both among the most highly qualified people on the planet to write (and edit a book) about dolphins, and both contribute their own chapters to this wonderful compendium of research from experts in a number of fields. Subjects covered are diverse, and encompass many topics I had not seen in other books, such as analysis of teeth as an indicator of age and wellness, the behavior of dolphins inside tuna nets, an in-depth analysis of feeding and hunting strategies, and many other intriguing facets of cetacean behavior.
This book is a "must-read" for anyone who wants to separate fact from myth and become better grounded in scientific cetacean studies.

My 8 year olds loves dolphins and the many colored picutres in this book were just what she wanted.

Big beautiful pictures. Brief descriptions of how dolphins swim, breathe, communicate, and eat etc. Perfect picture book for ages 5 and under.

Jean-Pierre Sylvestre has taken great care in writing this book. Every known species of dolphin and propoise is covered, and he includes a wealth of facts about each species. Take care, this isn't a whale watching book, the only whales covered are the killer whale, false killer whale, pygmy killer whale and long and short finned pilot whales.

I was particularly impressed with some of the rare photographs of river dolphins such as the amazon river dolphin, ganges river dolphin and Chinese river dolphins that I have not seen in other books. Of course, he also has spectacular photos of the more common species. The ones without photographs were the Franciscana, Hourglass dolphin, Fraser's dolphin, Chilean dolphin, Burmeister's propoise, Vaquita and Spectacled porpoise all others included at least one photograph.

Included with the description of each species is a world map of their ranges, a pencil sketch of each species (especially useful if there is no photograph), when they were first identified, diet, population, other common names, reproduction information, a sketch of their skulls and interestingly enough sound emission information (frequency range and where the research was done etc...). This is only part of the information included, he's got all the common information about size and field identification too of course.

What I like about the book is that it can easily be used as a browsing book for people with a casual interest if they want to ID a dolphin they've seen, or somone looking for a little more detail.

There is also and excellent introduction to the book which includes general information about all species, the taxonomy, sound production and hearing, fossil record information and much more.

You can't really go wrong with the book. If you like this book, I also suggest Eyewitness Handbooks "Whales Dolphins and Porpoises" by Mark Carwardine which is just as good and covers all of the dolphins and porpoises plus all the whales. That text is a little less technical without the skulls or sound frequency information and is geared more towards whale watchers.