Full-throttle fun, with a solid foundation of fact.
A peppy pair of podcasters take readers back in time for prehistoric treats, ranging from exciting dino smackdowns to an interview with an argumentative chicken.
Constant and voluble presences themselves in the cartoon illustrations, the charismatic couple squire young fans past a dazzling array of dinosaurs and dino-adjacent creatures from pterosaurs to giant sharks while strewing the quick-turn pages with (sometimes literally) mind-blowing facts. Beginning 4.5 billion years ago with our planet’s birth, the tour moves through successive zones of “Paleozoic Park,” past the “Big Kaboom” of the Permian Extinction, to a “family reunion” of early humans and prehumans. Once the big picture has been laid out, it’s on to discussions of fossils from footprints to feces, and then to a flood of mini-features including galleries of dino eggs, modern fossils that sold for eye-watering sums, dinosaurs with goofy names like Dracorex hogwartsia, and such particularly toothy prehistoric predators as Spinosaurus (which “swims with the sharks and eats them too”). A final posting of “Dino-Jobs” offers career alternatives to paleontology for dinosaur lovers, while the backmatter features not only recommended reading, a large glossary, and comprehensive source notes for all the factual content, but also two pages of QR codes leading to relevant podcast episodes.
Full-throttle fun, with a solid foundation of fact. (index, photo credits) (Nonfiction. 6-10)Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780358697084
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Storytide/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Not the duo’s best, but fans will enjoy the effort.
“There was an old scientist who swallowed a dinosaur. / I don’t know why she swallowed a dinosaur, but she went to explore.”
She swallows a fern to feed the saurian, then a rock and a pick and a dustpan. In between the old scientist’s gastronomical feats, two children, one tan-skinned and one light-skinned—ask each other questions or spout facts about dinosaurs and paleontology. “Fossils are rocks containing traces of the past.” “Evidence of plants and animals built to last!” The book, the latest of Colandro’s many takes on the “There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly” song, closes with the old scientist, the kids, and the dinosaurs visiting a museum of natural history. With a rhyme scheme that is often as strained as the conceit of the voracious old lady, Colandro makes another foray into nonfiction that is relatively light on facts (previous titles have explored holidays, the seasons, astronomy, and undersea life). Lee is again along to offer his signature bug-eyed and scribbly illustrations that can be a bit unnerving at times. The children’s rhyming banter in speech bubbles interrupts the old lady patter, making the whole at once familiar and clunky. Paleo facts and a scavenger hunt at the end might add to the instruction and the fun respectively. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Not the duo’s best, but fans will enjoy the effort. (Informational picture book. 6-10)Pub Date: May 3, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-338-66840-7
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Cartwheel/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A reasonably solid grounding in constitutional rights, their flexibility, lacunae, and hard-won corrections, despite a few...
Shamir offers an investigation of the foundations of freedoms in the United States via its founding documents, as well as movements and individuals who had great impacts on shaping and reshaping those institutions.
The opening pages of this picture book get off to a wobbly start with comments such as “You know that feeling you get…when you see a wide open field that you can run through without worrying about traffic or cars? That’s freedom.” But as the book progresses, Shamir slowly steadies the craft toward that wide-open field of freedom. She notes the many obvious-to-us-now exclusivities that the founding political documents embodied—that the entitled, white, male authors did not extend freedom to enslaved African-Americans, Native Americans, and women—and encourages readers to learn to exercise vigilance and foresight. The gradual inclusion of these left-behind people paints a modestly rosy picture of their circumstances today, and the text seems to give up on explaining how Native Americans continue to be left behind. Still, a vital part of what makes freedom daunting is its constant motion, and that is ably expressed. Numerous boxed tidbits give substance to the bigger political picture. Who were the abolitionists and the suffragists, what were the Montgomery bus boycott and the “Uprising of 20,000”? Faulkner’s artwork conveys settings and emotions quite well, and his drawing of Ruby Bridges is about as darling as it gets. A helpful timeline and bibliography appear as endnotes.
A reasonably solid grounding in constitutional rights, their flexibility, lacunae, and hard-won corrections, despite a few misfires. (Informational picture book. 6-10)Pub Date: May 2, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-54728-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017
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