The final view of that T. Rex towering over the two fleeing humans bodes ill for Dad. Maybe he should have paid closer...
What do parents know? When it comes to dinosaurs, maybe not as much as they think.
Squiring young Dave through the museum’s dino exhibits, Dad condescendingly laughs off his son’s anxious queries about why they’re winking, grinning and even trying to snatch his burger as figments of an active imagination. Until, that is, one final question—“Then why is that one following us, Dad?”—sparks a cogent parental response: “Run, Dave, RUN!!” Ayto provides labels with pronunciation keys for each exhibit, but rather than depict the fat-bodied, skinny-limbed dinos as fossil skeletons, he fleshes them out with brightly colored hides and toothily predatory expressions. He goes nuts with perspective and scale, depicting a gigantic Tyrannosaurus snout squeezing its way through a doorway—the cracks in the marble bode ill for its structural integrity—while a tiny “In case of emergency break glass” to the side demonstrates just how futile modern protections will be.
The final view of that T. Rex towering over the two fleeing humans bodes ill for Dad. Maybe he should have paid closer attention to what his offspring was telling him. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: March 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-56145-690-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Peachtree
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2012
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
Eye candy and intellectual nourishment alike for newly independent readers.
A classic informational early reader gets a substantial, long-overdue update.
Kirkus criticized the 1985 edition for conveying outdated and misleading information—chivalrously leaving the stodgy colored-pencil illustrations unmentioned. All of that has been addressed here. Revised by the late Milton’s brother Kent, the text highlights or at least names over a dozen dinos, from the diminutive Citipati to the humongous Argentinosaurus, “as big as a house, longer than three buses, and as heavy as thirteen elephants!” Prehistoric contemporaries that were not dinosaurs also get nods, as do modern paleontology, the great extinction and the continued survival of birds: “So the dinosaur days go on.” Tempesta’s cover painting of a brightly patterned Triceratops being attacked by a T. Rex with a feathery spinal fringe opens a suite of equally dramatic group and single portraits. They feature mottled monsters viewed from low angles to accentuate their massiveness and reflect current thinking about feathers and coloration.
Eye candy and intellectual nourishment alike for newly independent readers. (Informational early reader. 6-8)Pub Date: July 22, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-385-37923-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2014
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