THESAURUS HAS A SECRET

What’s this dinosaur’s guilty pleasure? Mum’s the word.

Though he acts like a regular dinosaur (“just with a wider vocabulary”), what Thesaurus—a blunt-nosed, turquoise sauropod in Glazer’s simple cartoon illustrations—likes best is to sneak off into the bushes…with a book. He actually has stacks of them, which is odd because (believe it or not) dinosaurs really aren’t natural readers. But his long-held secret is revealed when he suddenly realizes that he’s been unconsciously reading Pterosaur Pan aloud—and drawn, instead of general mockery, a fascinated audience: “What happens next?” “Carry on!” “I like the part with the crocodile.” Dovetailing nicely with its salutary messages about the pleasures of words and reading (and reading aloud), the art is festooned with appropriate or playfully altered classics, from The Phantom Tollbooth and Where the Wild Things Are to Allosaurus’s Adventures in Wonderland, Five Children and Ichthyosaur, Make Way for Hatchlings, and (adding at least a whiff of diversity to the mix) One Hundred and Fifty Million Years of Solitude. If Thesaurus’ literary appetites aren’t exactly broad, diverse, or expansive, his trove does offer at least a starter list with wide age appeal for reading alone or aloud.

A wash of wordplay: jaunty, jolly, jocund, not to mention Jurassic.