There’s a fair lot of dinosaurs for one volume, but low production values push this to the back of the herd.
A 30-member dino gallery, with clumsily Photoshopped scenes, founded on the well-worn “if dinosaurs came back” premise.
Said premise does have enduring child appeal—though West manages to dim even that by assembling pictorial elements without using them in any imaginative way or even integrating them. With notable lack of visual logic, for instance, he shoehorns into busy street scenes life-sized, realistically detailed T. Rex and other toothy predators that don’t appear to notice the human prey at their feet. Furthermore, in his sometimes–washed-out pictures, a herd of Protoceratops runs across beach sand without leaving tracks, several figures appear to float slightly above the ground, and a huge Carnotosaurus rams headfirst into a car without denting it. Nor do the people looking on, all of whom have the generic plastic look of figures from midbudget video games, usually show more than mild anxiety. On facing pages, two to four sentences of general notes on each dino’s size, diet and special features include an unproven claim that Altirhinus could blow up its nose like a balloon, repetitious phrasing (three dinos are found in “quieter parts of town”) and a reference to a busker who has been trimmed out of the accompanying illustration.
There’s a fair lot of dinosaurs for one volume, but low production values push this to the back of the herd. (summary fact chart) (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-77085-220-4
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Firefly
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Formulaic but not stale…even if it does mine previous topical material rather than expand it.
A guide to better behavior—at home, on the playground, in class, and in the library.
Serving as a sort of overview for the series’ 12 previous exercises in behavior modeling, this latest outing opens with a set of badly behaving dinos, identified in an endpaper key and also inconspicuously in situ. Per series formula, these are paired to leading questions like “Does she spit out her broccoli onto the floor? / Does he shout ‘I hate meat loaf!’ while slamming the door?” (Choruses of “NO!” from young audiences are welcome.) Midway through, the tone changes (“No, dinosaurs don’t”), and good examples follow to the tune of positive declarative sentences: “They wipe up the tables and vacuum the floors. / They share all the books and they never slam doors,” etc. Teague’s customary, humongous prehistoric crew, all depicted in exact detail and with wildly flashy coloration, fill both their spreads and their human-scale scenes as their human parents—no same-sex couples but some are racially mixed, and in one the man’s the cook—join a similarly diverse set of sibs and other children in either disapprobation or approving smiles. All in all, it’s a well-tested mix of oblique and prescriptive approaches to proper behavior as well as a lighthearted way to play up the use of “please,” “thank you,” and even “I’ll help when you’re hurt.”
Formulaic but not stale…even if it does mine previous topical material rather than expand it. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-338-36334-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Blue Sky/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020
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