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Erin Ciaravino is a full time working mom who loves a warm cup of coffee on a fall morning and cozy movie nights with her husband and three kids. In between diaper changes and bath time shenanigans, her favorite thing to do is create beautiful stories from the tall tales her children invent. Erin hopes that her stories help inspire the imaginative minds of future generations.
Dinosaurs Like Bananas Too! originates from the imagination of Logan Ciaravino, who created the story as a tool of self expression when suffering from a speech delay. By using his imagination and building the story over time, he was able to articulate his first creative thought, which is the story of Dinosaurs Like Bananas Too! It was important to share Logan's story with the world because we are all faced with adversity in our lives and feel the pressure to meet external expectations. Erin wants to show him that no matter how long it takes and no matter how perfect or imperfect it is, we all have a story to tell. And that story is always worth telling.
“It effectively assures the audience that dinosaurs like many of the same things that kids do, thus highlighting how one can find common experiences with others.”
– Kirkus Reviews
In the Ciaravinos’ picture book, a boy yearning for adventure finds it in the form of a dinosaur egg.
One night, a boy named Logan gazes out the window and wishes “he had someplace exciting to be.” Suddenly, he’s shaken out of his reverie by a T. rex hatching under his bed. Already raring to go, the small dinosaur beckons Logan to follow him, and the pair travel down a “slide of tangled twisty straws” that takes them to a jungle in the boy’s closet, complete with a dancing monkey. After that, the two find a whale singing in the bathtub and a bear painting on Logan’s bedroom-turned-cave walls before bouncing onto some fluffy clouds—eventually landing in the kitchen just in time for a snack. Throughout the tale is a refrain about how fun it is to try new things. It effectively assures the audience that dinosaurs like many of the same things that kids do, thus highlighting how one can find common experiences with others. The stylized typeface may be a bit difficult for emerging readers to decode, as may the inconsistent punctuation, which gives the work the feel of poetry. Preston’s painterly, full-color cartoon-style illustrations are vivid throughout. However, the characters’ limbs occasionally seem blocky and stiff.
A colorful, if unevenly executed, tale about the power of imagination and finding common interests.
Pub Date: March 6, 2023
ISBN: 9798987236512
Page count: 42pp
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2023
Day job
Operations Manager
Favorite author
John Steinbeck
Hometown
The Woodlands, TX
New Children’s Adventure Shows Young Readers They Each Have a Story to Tell, 2023
New Book, Dinosaurs Like Bananas Too, Beckons Readers on a Meaningful Adventure, 2023
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