The Music of Dolphins
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The Music of Dolphins, by Karen Hesse, is a children's book that follows the story of Mila (translated as Spanish for "miracle", although this is inaccurate), a feral child raised by a pod of dolphins around the Florida Keys and Caribbean.
[edit] Plot
Mila is discovered on a cay (where her "family" of dolphins were playing and feeding near) by a trio of men in a helicopter and is taken to a clinic for feral children like her. The person in charge of her rehabilitation is a woman named Doctor Beck, and she is raised as a foster child. Mila meets a boy named Justin that falls in love with her. Mila also meets a girl named Shay, who, like her, is feral, but had grown up in solitary confinment, unlike Mila (Later, she fails to make progress and is moved away from the research facility). Ultimately, however, she decides to go back to the dolphins, where she can be among her true family.
The novel uses a narrative structure that parallels Mila's increasing comprehension of English. At the novel's opening, when Mila is with the dolphins and cannot speak English, the story is told from a neutral third person (Mila's POV) perspective. The text moves to simple English as the protagonist learns human language, becomes more complex as her emotions increase, reverts to simple English when she yearns for the dolphins again, and finally goes back to the third person perspective.
Though the novel is fiction, it is based on real-life experiences of those who have worked with feral children.
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