DINOSAURS LIKE BANANAS TOO!

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.