DINOSAURS ARE NOT EXTINCT

Can it be that dinosaurs still actually live in our backyards, fly in the sky, and poop on our cars?

Indeed. Though it’s not exactly news anymore, Sheneman here gives the bird-dino connection fresh jolts of wonder and hilarity. He traces it from the Jurassic Era to today—explaining how an asteroid brought the age of dinosaurs to a sudden end (allowing, the mammalian author rashly claims, mammals to become “the dominant form of life”) but left one branch of feathered theropods to evolve, diversify, and spread to nearly every corner of our planet. The illustrations follow suit, beginning with mildly caricatured, dot- or googly-eyed dinosaurs posing in idyllic settings and making dim-bulb side comments. These give way in stages to views of modern (equally verbal) penguins, pigeons, peacocks, and other avian species in various habitats before gathering with their (even more) prehistoric forbears for a droll but revealing group portrait and then perching around the closing timeline. “I still don’t get the resemblance,” mutters a fuddled-looking T. rex at the end, looking down at a chicken. Viewers, though, well might. A trollish caveman, a lumpy White descendant in a lab coat (identified as “your dad”) joking about the fried dinosaur on his plate, and a dinner companion politely telling him to cut it out are the only human figures in sight. (This book was reviewed digitally with 9-by-22-inch double-page spreads viewed at 68% of actual size.)

Why pine for prehistoric predators when their direct descendants are perching on the nearest birdbath?