The best writers create an experience so strong the reader feels present with the characters, completely immersed in place, time, emotion, and thought.  Karen Hesse is one of the most skilled writers I've read, and each book she writes is unique, unlike others she has written as well as those of any other writer.  The Music of Dolphins is told from the point of view of Mila, a feral child discovered on an uninhabited island between Florida and Cuba.  The narrative is her journey from dolphin girl, with no human language or knowledge, to human -- with all of its pitfalls. 

As with her Newbery award-winning book Out of the Dust, in which I was constantly thirsty as I survived the Dust Bowl in Oklahoma, The Music of Dolphins had me longing for the sea, feeling the waves and skin of her dolphin mother as she tried to make the doctors understand.  Hesse slyly includes lessons in psychology as well as language acquisition, noting that "Humans see things only the human way.  Humans think they are the best, that they know the only right way."

This book is sure to prompt discussions of what it means to be human and to be part of a family, to stretch the minds of readers as they struggle to comprehend what it is like to be Mila, and to spur research into the real existence of feral children.