The most recommended books about dolphins

It is a fiction based on facts about whales and about what Four Arrows believes they are trying to tell us regarding the pollution of the Oceans that threatens us all. A whale captures a marine biologist and his encounter, feeling almost biblical but very current, reveals their important message to humanity. In this very dramatic story, you’ll also find an ecological treatise, and a call to action so needed at this time.

Full disclosure: Anne is a dear friend and was an MFA workshop-mate of mine.

But even if she wasn’t, I’m confident this would still be one of my favorite collections. There is so much magic in Valente’s writing, in the gorgeous prose but also in the content of the stories: ghosts, pink dolphins, tiny librarians, Northern Lights.

Much of the magic is not supernatural, but just the magic of the natural world, and Valente is a master of place; I’ve always admired her use of setting. Many of the stories deal with loss, grief, and pain, but the magic acts as a way to transcend these things, which is what I aim to do in my stories as well.

Easy Travel to Other Planets by Ted Mooney, is a fictionalised story of an attempt at another Moon shot idea; the building of an interspecies communication bridge between humans and dolphins. This was a real experiment attempted in the 1960s, by neuroscientist John Lilly – which I made a film about, for the BBC, called The Girl who talked to Dolphins. Like God’s Debris, Mooney’s book challenges our perceptions of reality, and like Varieties of Scientific Experience, it tries to shed light on what it is to be human. Not only does it cover these grand ideas, but it also touches on some very prescient themes – such as our current epidemic of information overload and our existential environmental crisis.

This superb picture book for children aged 6 to 9 begins by asking children to wonder why dolphins and sharks look superficially similar, yet are less closely related than dolphins and hippos. It covers the emergence of life, evolution in the seas, the appearance of land animals, and the “return to the blue” by dolphins and whales. The illustrations are terrific: bright, simple, and kid-friendly while retaining scientific details.  

In The Dolphin House, author Audrey Shulman helped me form an extraordinary bond with one species in particular: dolphins.

Although this remarkable novel is based on a true story about a bizarre 1960s experiment, what caught my attention upfront was the fact that the main character, Cora, is partially deaf. Few authors incorporate people with different abilities in their writing, let alone make them a focal point.

Shulman takes this a step further, making Cora’s “disability” the trait that helps her understand and empathize with the four dolphins in her care. The writing is swift and confident; the story, engrossing.

Dolphin Rescue is a story for 7-9-year-olds about siblings, Maddie & Atticus, who live in a coastal town in Maine.

They love nature and are very ecologically aware. While trying to solve the mystery of household trash scattered on lawns in their neighborhood, they help a pod of dolphins in trouble because of a tangle of fishing line. 

I enjoyed the interesting facts and lovely photos about the area and the nearby waters.

Trying to write from a non-human perspective is a tricky decision for a writer as I think we find it easier to read and write about our own species.

So I really admire Laline Paull’s non-human stories (like Bees and Pod) and the way she writes from the most difficult first-person point of view. While it is impossible to truly understand what goes on in an animal’s head, Paull does an incredible job of pulling us away from our own narrow window on the world and making us to look at ourselves from the diverse perspectives of the marine animals and the dramatically changing world we’ve forced them to live in.

Be warned though, this book may appeal to younger readers, but it also has some quite confronting scenes.

When I read The Hungry Tide for the first time, it read to me like a fantasy novel set in a faraway world. Except it isn’t. The setting for The Hungry Tide is a real place, but it is as dangerous and as fantastic as something created by Tolkien. It takes place in the Sundarbans of India, a world where tigers hunt people and tidal floods come without warning and wipe out villages. Sometimes I read a book to get lost in a world that doesn’t exist. Other times I read a book to get lost in a world that does. I’ve never been to the Sundarbans, but I still periodically dream about them. 

Another winner by Karen Pryor! In this book, Karen talks about the methodology of clicker training and why it is such an important teaching tool. With the sound of an audible signal (the click), we can teach the animal that what he/she did, at that moment in time, is the reason why they are receiving reinforcement. As Bob Bailey once said, “The clicker is used as a scalpel to carve out behavior.” 

Scattered throughout the text are video URLs to demonstrate some of the concepts. For example, a reader can go to the URL and watch a cat do agility!

Whatever canine sport you are in, the clicker can be a valuable tool in your toolbox.

I love this book because, as a dog trainer, I want to use tools that communicate effectively to the dog. This book talks about clicker training and why it can be used to pinpoint… show more.

The title doesn’t do justice to how stunning the information within it is, the very careful and thoughtful research, the documentation of our historical connection with cetaceans. Most impressive are the thorough descriptions of their brains, minds, communication skills well beyond our ability to even register and understand. Their echolocation, their ability to sense electrical signals from heartbeats, their multidimensional vocalization, and connected visual and aural brain areas allows them to send “sonic pictures” to each other, receiving “at least ten times more through the sense organs than we can,” is just for starters. Read this book and be amazed…and humbled!