Nice-enough bedtime fare for toddler dinophiles.
Nursery favorites “Humpty Dumpty,” “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” and more are rewritten with dino roars and stomps.
This board book is a straightforward compilation of nursery rhymes and songs. While many will be familiar after a few lines, since many are renamed to suit the dinosaur theme, readers may sometimes find themselves muddling through pacing, tune, and rhythm until they catch on. Some changes are as simple as editing a single word. In “Rock-a-bye Dino,” all of the instances of the word “baby” are changed to “dino”—nothing more. Others, such as “Five Little Dinosaurs,” a take on “Five Little Pumpkins,” are more elaborately reimagined. “Star Light, Star Bright” is the only included rhyme with no edits; accompanying it is a picture of a young regaliceratops clutching a teddy bear and looking out the window at the titular star. Overall, Rešček’s illustrations are sweet and suitable to a bedtime book for little ones. The images include enough details to engage readers with thoughtful touches, such as a bird gently laying a leaf as a blanket across a sleepy dinosaur. The colors are bright and child-friendly, and the dinosaurs are all endearing, with perky noses and expressive eyes. With a gift plate printed into the front endpaper, it’s clear that this is designed to be a gift to a family for a new baby. It’s a nice take on the standard book of lullabies even if the rewrites sometimes make for slightly awkward read-alouds.
Nice-enough bedtime fare for toddler dinophiles. (Board book. 6 mos.-2)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-68010-589-6
Page Count: 22
Publisher: Tiger Tales
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Not a great choice for the youngest dinosaur lovers.
A board-book ode to parental love as old as the dinosaurs.
A line of text on the left of each spread reads like a dinosaur-themed valentine that a third grader might choose, with punishingly punny wordplay that incorporates dinosaur-related words. On the facing page a dinosaur pair—a baby and an adult—gaze lovingly into each other’s eyes against whimsical, pastel-hued prehistoric-ish backgrounds. In smaller print, in all caps, at the bottom of the left page is the scientific name for the dinosaur referenced by the text and picture followed by a helpful phonetic pronunciation guide. White-outlined footprints appear next to their names, though the white is sometimes difficult to see against the pastel pages. Ten of the best-known dinosaurs are included. Twisting the dinosaur names to fit the loving sentiments succeeds some of the time but more often results in tortured text, well beyond the understanding of the board book audience. The line accompanying two hugging velociraptors, for instance, is just confusing: “Wrap-TOR arms around me, / with you I’ll always stay.” Others are just plain clumsy: “I-wanna-GUANODON you kisses, / I truly just adore you.” Very young children, even those fascinated by dinosaurs, will not get it. Older dinosaur fans will be put off by the babyish format.
Not a great choice for the youngest dinosaur lovers. (Board book. 18 mos.-3)Pub Date: Jan. 5, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-7282-2295-0
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Sourcebooks Wonderland
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
A sweet reminder that love is best measured in actions.
Even when well-intended plans go awry, sometimes “I love you” is plastered all over one’s face.
Tiny T. Rex wants to make the perfect valentine for friend Pointy, a stegosaurus. It’s a noble ideal, but perfection is more elusive than the little theropod realized. That’s the premise of this charming board book that succinctly celebrates love, friendship, aspiration, perseverance, limitations, and the notion that it’s the thought that counts—especially when it’s clearly reflected in effort. Like its protagonist, this book is small, but it’s rich in value and works on every level. The artwork has an elegant simplicity that beautifully balances color, personality, and clever detail. A panel of Tiny designing the card in chalk on a blackboard, for example, reveals the scale of the little dino’s intentions: a giant heart, ribbons, smaller hearts dangling from springs, heart-shaped balloons, and fireworks, all much larger than Tiny. The project is clearly a labor of love: Tiny sweats, tugging a bucket of paint—“Pointy’s favorite color!”—but the bucket spills on the artist, not the valentine. Trying to make the card “extra fancy,” Tiny is covered in glitter. Tiny rips, snips, and rerips, trying to make the perfect heart; misspells Pointy; and glues springs and hearts all over everything. When Tiny apologizes for having no valentine for Pointy, Pointy recognizes immediately that the perfect valentine is a friend like Tiny.
A sweet reminder that love is best measured in actions. (Board book. 1-5)Pub Date: Dec. 29, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4521-8489-0
Page Count: 18
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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