The Music of Dolphins
Written by: Karen Hesse
Cover illustrations by: Greg Harlin
Published in 1996 by Scholastic, Inc. in NY
Genre: Science Fiction?
Age: Grades 3-5
Summary: A teenage girl covered in barnacles and salt is found on an uninhabited island off the coast of Florida. She is placed in the care of two research doctors who help her regain her knowledge of the human world and add to what little knowledge she originally possessed. This book details her struggle to recognize her humanity in a world she barely remembers anything about. She does not understand the television and locked doors of this world, yet she is faced with those elements of our culture regularly. Mila befriends another girl who was rescued from a condition similar to hers, named Shay. Sadly, Shay never seems to make the progress Mila does, despite all the assistance Mila provides for her. (Mila's success is also relative to interpretation.)
Response: The first thing readers will notice upon seeing this book is the text. The first thirteen chapters and the last ten chapters have very large print. This font represents the gap between her dolphin world and her human world. Everything in the middle has a regular-sized font, which represents things that happen to her in the human world. Sections in the book written in italics detail about her life with the dolphins and provide factual information about the lives of these creatures. This method of having text with a visual interpretations of an underlying meaning is very powerful. I believe it is something that teachers will certainly have to point out to heir students and discuss it with them for them to have a solid understanding of why the author may have written this way.
One of the most curious characters in this work, aside form Mila and Shay, is Doctor Beck's son Justin. He is somewhat similar to the two girls because he has come to accept that his mother will never find him as interesting as her clients, and so he has become introverted and less a part of the world in which he lives.
Mila is very passionate about music. Perhaps this is because she has lived with the ecolocational sounds of dolphins for the majority of her life and has become very in-tune with musical sounds. She is enthralled with Mozart and the fact that one day she might learn enough about the recorder to be able to play a song as complex as one of his! I believe that the idea behind the title is that nothing will ever be as beautiful to Mila as the music of dolphins--her family. Mila says: "I fell the music inside me. It says something more than just he notes, more than just he sounds. It is hearing with more than the ears. Like the way it is when I am with the dolphins. Or when I see Justin and Doctor Beck together. Or when Sandy talks abut her father who is dead. There is a way I feel when Sandy hugs me so good and long and her stiff hair brushes my ear and her good smell fills my nose" (76). Mila is describing how the feeling she gets when she is around music makes her feel happy just like being around family.
In this novel, one can see how society changed Mila's thoughts about the world and her life. When she sees her former self on television, she states that "I was afraid. I saw the girl with no clothes. I thought, this is a bad girl. She has no clothes. I saw her long wild hair. I thought, This girl is ugly with her long wild hair. I saw the girl with her eyes showing white. I thought, This girl has fear. I thought, I am happy not to be that girl. But I am that girl" (106-107). When Mila was first brought from that island she was unafraid and completely happy with herself, but once she got clothing and had her hair cut, she thought it was ridiculous to look like her former self.
Teaching Connections: After reading this novel with a class, I think it would be a great idea to have students take the idea of this story (perhaps with only the knowledge they are given in the initially newspaper article in the book) and have them re-write their own stories about this lost girl. Encourage students to think about making their text represent something in their stories as this author did with her novel.
Another teaching idea is to have students who are learning to play the recorder themselves write a short song that resembles the sounds of dolphins to them.
Written by: Karen Hesse
Cover illustrations by: Greg Harlin
Published in 1996 by Scholastic, Inc. in NY
Genre: Science Fiction?
Age: Grades 3-5
Summary: A teenage girl covered in barnacles and salt is found on an uninhabited island off the coast of Florida. She is placed in the care of two research doctors who help her regain her knowledge of the human world and add to what little knowledge she originally possessed. This book details her struggle to recognize her humanity in a world she barely remembers anything about. She does not understand the television and locked doors of this world, yet she is faced with those elements of our culture regularly. Mila befriends another girl who was rescued from a condition similar to hers, named Shay. Sadly, Shay never seems to make the progress Mila does, despite all the assistance Mila provides for her. (Mila's success is also relative to interpretation.)
Response: The first thing readers will notice upon seeing this book is the text. The first thirteen chapters and the last ten chapters have very large print. This font represents the gap between her dolphin world and her human world. Everything in the middle has a regular-sized font, which represents things that happen to her in the human world. Sections in the book written in italics detail about her life with the dolphins and provide factual information about the lives of these creatures. This method of having text with a visual interpretations of an underlying meaning is very powerful. I believe it is something that teachers will certainly have to point out to heir students and discuss it with them for them to have a solid understanding of why the author may have written this way.
One of the most curious characters in this work, aside form Mila and Shay, is Doctor Beck's son Justin. He is somewhat similar to the two girls because he has come to accept that his mother will never find him as interesting as her clients, and so he has become introverted and less a part of the world in which he lives.
Mila is very passionate about music. Perhaps this is because she has lived with the ecolocational sounds of dolphins for the majority of her life and has become very in-tune with musical sounds. She is enthralled with Mozart and the fact that one day she might learn enough about the recorder to be able to play a song as complex as one of his! I believe that the idea behind the title is that nothing will ever be as beautiful to Mila as the music of dolphins--her family. Mila says: "I fell the music inside me. It says something more than just he notes, more than just he sounds. It is hearing with more than the ears. Like the way it is when I am with the dolphins. Or when I see Justin and Doctor Beck together. Or when Sandy talks abut her father who is dead. There is a way I feel when Sandy hugs me so good and long and her stiff hair brushes my ear and her good smell fills my nose" (76). Mila is describing how the feeling she gets when she is around music makes her feel happy just like being around family.
In this novel, one can see how society changed Mila's thoughts about the world and her life. When she sees her former self on television, she states that "I was afraid. I saw the girl with no clothes. I thought, this is a bad girl. She has no clothes. I saw her long wild hair. I thought, This girl is ugly with her long wild hair. I saw the girl with her eyes showing white. I thought, This girl has fear. I thought, I am happy not to be that girl. But I am that girl" (106-107). When Mila was first brought from that island she was unafraid and completely happy with herself, but once she got clothing and had her hair cut, she thought it was ridiculous to look like her former self.
Teaching Connections: After reading this novel with a class, I think it would be a great idea to have students take the idea of this story (perhaps with only the knowledge they are given in the initially newspaper article in the book) and have them re-write their own stories about this lost girl. Encourage students to think about making their text represent something in their stories as this author did with her novel.
Another teaching idea is to have students who are learning to play the recorder themselves write a short song that resembles the sounds of dolphins to them.
(Image retrieved from http://www.mlms.logan.k12.ut.us/%7Eckircalli/images/jpeg/music_dolphins.jpg on 4 April 2008)
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