Go, Cryptoclidus! (Picture book. 6-9)
Another prehistoric predicament from the creators of Ankylosaur Attack (2011) and Pterosaur Trouble (2013), with similarly nongory but otherwise photorealistic illustrations.
Gliding sinuously through shallow, sunlit waters crowded with tentacled ammonites and early fish, a young Cryptoclidus follows her mother and the rest of the plesiosaur pod. They feed peacefully on squidlike belemnites—until, distracted by a reef’s nooks and crannies, the saurian protagonist becomes separated and attracts the attention of hungry Liopleurodon, a much larger, predatory relative. Depicted from angles that show off their cetacean bulk, long-necked grace and crocodilian dentifrice to thrilling effect, both marine reptiles cut convincingly lifelike figures as they torpedo through equally realistic oceanscapes. Cryptoclidus makes an escape at last with a frantic leap over the reef’s jutting rocks and is reunited with her parent: “It was a big, wild, dangerous ocean, but they would swim it together. As a family.” Loxton stirs current theories about plesiosaur behavior and physiology into his melodramatic episode, expanding on them in an informative afterword.
Go, Cryptoclidus! (Picture book. 6-9)Pub Date: March 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-55453-633-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Kids Can
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2014
Sturdy split pages allow readers to create their own inventive combinations from among a handful of prehistoric critters. Hard on the heels of Flip-O-Saurus (2010) drops this companion gallery, printed on durable boards and offering opportunities to mix and match body thirds of eight prehistoric mammals, plus a fish and a bird, to create such portmanteau creatures as a “Gas-Lo-Therium,” or a “Mega-Tor-Don.” The “Mam-Nyc-Nia” places the head of a mammoth next to the wings and torso of an Icaronycteris (prehistoric bat) and the hind legs of a Macrauchenia (a llamalike creature with a short trunk), to amusing effect. Drehsen adds first-person captions on the versos, which will also mix and match to produce chuckles: “Do you like my nose? It’s actually a short trunk…” “I may remind you of an ostrich, because my wings aren’t built for flying…” “My tail looks like a dolphin’s.” With but ten layers to flip, young paleontologists will run through most of the permutations in just a few minutes, but Ball’s precisely detailed ink-and-watercolor portraits of each animal formally posed against plain cream colored backdrops may provide a slightly more enduring draw. A silhouette key on the front pastedown includes a pronunciation guide and indicates scale. Overall, a pleasing complement to more substantive treatments. (Novelty nonfiction. 6-8)
Pub Date: May 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-7892-1099-9
Page Count: 22
Publisher: Abbeville Kids
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2011
Formulaic but not stale…even if it does mine previous topical material rather than expand it.
A guide to better behavior—at home, on the playground, in class, and in the library.
Serving as a sort of overview for the series’ 12 previous exercises in behavior modeling, this latest outing opens with a set of badly behaving dinos, identified in an endpaper key and also inconspicuously in situ. Per series formula, these are paired to leading questions like “Does she spit out her broccoli onto the floor? / Does he shout ‘I hate meat loaf!’ while slamming the door?” (Choruses of “NO!” from young audiences are welcome.) Midway through, the tone changes (“No, dinosaurs don’t”), and good examples follow to the tune of positive declarative sentences: “They wipe up the tables and vacuum the floors. / They share all the books and they never slam doors,” etc. Teague’s customary, humongous prehistoric crew, all depicted in exact detail and with wildly flashy coloration, fill both their spreads and their human-scale scenes as their human parents—no same-sex couples but some are racially mixed, and in one the man’s the cook—join a similarly diverse set of sibs and other children in either disapprobation or approving smiles. All in all, it’s a well-tested mix of oblique and prescriptive approaches to proper behavior as well as a lighthearted way to play up the use of “please,” “thank you,” and even “I’ll help when you’re hurt.”
Formulaic but not stale…even if it does mine previous topical material rather than expand it. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-338-36334-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Blue Sky/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020
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