Imagine you are a Dolphin

Review also includes:

Imagine you are a Crocodile, ill. Mike Bostock, 978-0750243186

Imagine you are a Tiger, ill. Peter Melnyczuk, ‎978-0750243162

The books in this series encourage young readers or listeners to empathise with the daily life and activities of an adult creature and its young. In each title, habitats are strongly realised in words and pictures, as indeed we would expect from this author and the two illustrators.

The books are for very young children of about age three to five years but, even so, I would have welcomed there being more detail in the main narrative and, perhaps, in notes at the end. Parents and teachers know how profound some of the questions that young children ask can be. To be fair, a number of the pictures have the kind of detail and drama that encourage talk and reflection. In Imagine you are a Crocodile there is an image of the animal rearing from the water to catch a heron in flight. Another beguiling picture – in Imagine you are a Dolphin – shows a shoal of squid, a ‘feast deep in the ocean’ for the dolphin, lying luminous against the darkness of the ocean. Imagine you are a Tiger communicates well the power of instinctive behaviour – showing, for example, how the playful fights of tiger siblings are a preparation for their survival as successful predators