Dolphins Around the World

Sandy Campbell is a reference librarian in the Science and Technology Library at the University of Alberta.

These attractively designed books, taken together, make quite a good
introduction to dolphins. They are heavily illustrated with high-quality
stock photographs and some drawings, which take up more than half of
each page.

The text is fact-filled and informative. Adults as well as children
will learn from these books. In A Dolphin’s Body, Fun with Dolphins,
and Life in a Dolphin Pod, each two-page section covers a different
topic such as moving and diving, hunting with echolocation, or dolphin
humour. There is some overlap among the books. For example, the
paragraph on voluntary breathing and sleep found in A Dolphin’s Body
is repeated in Fun with Dolphins. However, there is not enough overlap
between the “Mating and Babies” section of Life in a Dolphin Pod and
the “Having Babies” section of A Dolphin’s Body to allow a library
to select one or the other.

Dolphins of the World dedicates half a page to a page to different
species of dolphins. Each book is completed by a half-page glossary and
a brief index.

While each book can stand alone, public and school libraries will need
to purchase all four volumes to get all the information about dolphins.
Highly recommended.