by Charlotte Voake ; illustrated by Charlotte Voake ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 4, 2020
An inventive idea cleverly executed.
A dinosaur story of family and size.
This surprising picture book uses illustrations that slowly build in tension to create a sense of high drama paired with simple, informative text that, on its own, says very little. “Some dinosaurs are small,” it starts, with a wee green reptile happily gathering pineapples in a basket. “They have tiny flat teeth for munching through fruit and leaves,” it goes on, with the small protagonist plucking a pear. But the next page, which says merely that “Some dinosaurs are BIG,” starts to introduce anxiety as enormous yellow and orange legs and tails flank the much smaller dino. The following page introduces two menacing theropods who, accordingly, “have huge pointy teeth and sharp claws.” Readers learn additional basic facts about the personalities and habits of the bigger dinosaurs as they steal fruit from the little one, who at first peeks over its shoulder anxiously and then bolts away. But luckily, the last dinosaur readers meet, who is “simply… /ENORMOUS,” turns out to be the teeny one’s mother, and she scares away the relatively puny carnivores. The well-paced text steadily and deliberately drives the image-drawn action forward, making for an engaging read-aloud that’s sure to appeal to dinosaur lovers and their friends.
An inventive idea cleverly executed. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5362-0936-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: April 7, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2020
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More by Karen Hesse
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by Karen Hesse ; illustrated by Charlotte Voake
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by Charlotte Voake ; illustrated by Charlotte Voake
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by Chris Butterworth ; illustrated by Charlotte Voake
by Heather Alexander ; illustrated by Andrés Lozano ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 15, 2017
A little technical for very first encounters, but both the content and the interactive presentation will absorb younger fans...
Cartoon portraits of ancient creatures and the modern scientists who study them illustrate a lift-the-flap dino Q-and-A.
Printed on sturdy stock and grouped into general topics (“On the Move: Let’s see how dinosaurs moved.”), the questions scattered across each page range from general queries such as “Could dinosaurs swim?” (no: contemporary sea creatures were marine reptiles and not dinosaurs) to anatomical and behavioral specifics: “Why did plant-eaters swallow rocks?” “Was T. rex a scavenger or a hunter?” “What does a fossil footprint tell us?” Most, though not all, of the answers are concealed beneath hinged rectangular flaps of diverse size and, aside from a few bobbles, such as defining “prehistoric” as “before humans,” offer generally accurate information. Lozano alternates simplified but recognizable figures of dinosaurs and their contemporaries in prehistoric settings with views of two young investigators—one white, one brown—in a museum or working at a dig or in a lab. These two also appear, though more briefly, in the co-published Life on Earth: Jungle, which presents an array of general facts about select jungle animals and products.
A little technical for very first encounters, but both the content and the interactive presentation will absorb younger fans of dinosaurs or natural science in general. (Informational novelty. 4-7)Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-84780-904-9
Page Count: 16
Publisher: Wide Eyed Editions
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
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More by Heather Alexander
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by Heather Alexander ; illustrated by Joseph Moffat-Peña
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by Heather Alexander ; illustrated by Alan Berry Rhys
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by Heather Alexander with Laura D'Asaro & Rose Wang ; illustrated by Vanessa Flores
by Alison Limentani ; illustrated by Alison Limentani ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 5, 2018
A terrific introduction to the ups and downs of measurement as well as relative scale.
Based on current fossil evidence, as tall as 10 velociraptors—or one giraffe.
Limentani doesn’t stop with height, though, and, as in her How Much Does a Ladybug Weigh? (2016) and How Long Is a Whale? (2017), profiles her subject in full using singularly vivid comparisons. T. Rex’s eyes were “as big as baseballs,” its teeth the size of bananas, its body and tail together as long as “6 lions.” In bold-lined, digitally colored linocut and collatype prints, she vividly demonstrates her comparisons. At one point she lines up sports balls of different sorts beneath a toothy head (playfully setting a baseball in the socket of a skeletal one on the opposite page to show placement), and at another she balances a T. Rex on one end of a teeter-totter with three 5,500-pound modern hippos on the other. She properly qualifies less-verifiable claims—T. Rex “might have been” scaly or feathered, “could have run as fast as an elephant or a meerkat”—but bases her physical estimates on specific fossils dubbed “Thomas,” “Stan,” and “Sue” and backs them up with an appended set of size ranges in feet and inches (no metric measurements are given).
A terrific introduction to the ups and downs of measurement as well as relative scale. (Informational picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: June 5, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-9107-1657-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Boxer Books
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2018
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