Reviews

By William Rossiter

Dilo in Lighthouse Bay is magical, fun, and suspenseful, just what children enjoy reading. This is the fifth in Horace Dobbs' chronicle of the adventures of Dilo the dolphin. With playful visits with various sea creatures and Dilo's various human friends, plus a dolphin's perspective on an oil rig fire, children are transported into the dolphin's world, easily identifying with all that happens. Dilo is the creation of Dr. Horace Dobbs, Honorary Director of Britain's International Dolphin Watch (http://www.idw.org/). He has been an enormous and positive inspiration for thousands of people for decades. With wit and wisdom backed by a career as a medical doctor, Horace has vigorously pursued his personal quest to understand and help people with mental and physical challenges, especially children, while helping wild dolphins. A related quest, the Dilo Dome Project, uses a small, portable dome that displays dolphin images and sounds around a patient, providing even particularly challenged children with a safe haven and freedom to imagine the dolphins' life. But even as various models have demonstrated the therapeutic benefits, the Dilo Dome needs to be made from more durable materials if it is to help as many people as it can. To either purchase the book, perhaps autographed in Horace's unique signature, or to help this special project, visit http://www.idw.org/ or http://www.dolphinfriend.com/.

"Crystal Whales" is an inspirational labor of love by Beau Ives, a gifted and unassuming man who has just now released what was a private video, as he sees the need to remind us of "how beautiful and powerful we are when we work together".

Subtitled "The true story behind the largest animal rescue in the history of the world", it ends with the international effort to save two gray whales trapped by ice near Barrow, Alaska in October 1988. But it begins one week before, with Beau releasing a sanctified crystal into that same deep water near Barrow, the first in a chain he would complete near Ushuaia, Argentina by March. His personal quest was to place special crystals in bodies of water to help heal the Earth. The next day ice closed the water for winter.

One week later hundreds of people were tromping over the ice where the crystal lay on the bottom, seeking ways to free the trapped whales. Using news videos of the event, Beau reminds us of the magnificent cooperation of so many diverse peoples, and especially the skill of the Russian ship captains that arrived to help and, with the help of the local Eskimos cutting channels, and Jim Nollman's acoustical skills, ultimately saved the day. This is a story of cooperation, inspiration and humanity. To some the story is only about coincidences, and a man driven by a quest they do not understand. But many will understand, and be inspired by the message and the moment that deserves to be remembered. Thank you, Beau!