Though rough around the edges, it’s witty on occasion and chock full of dinosaurs throughout.
Red meat for budding dinomaniacs eager to fill gaps in their knowledge of dinosaur anatomy, behavior, and family trees.
The “meat” bit is literal (visually, anyway) in this Italian import, as lists of features characteristic to carnivores are tagged with an image of a steak (those for herbivores get a sprig of tasty fern). The survey, presented in a variety of infographics, begins with a pair of winding timelines carrying bite-sized narrative blocks and flat, stylized dinos. It then goes on to group the dinosaurs—generally though not always to scale—according to types of bodies and defensive armament, relative sizes, eggs, teeth, plumage and colors, and probable nesting and herding habits. Following a tender if disappointingly generalized look at “Dinosaur Romance” and a glance at bird evolution, nods to Mesozoic flying and marine reptiles tuck up loose ends. A helpful index/glossary precedes a teeming prehistoric portrait gallery at the end. Broad as the coverage is, though, awkward design leaves readers to stumble over occasional unlabeled images and vice versa. Moreover, though De Amicis’ graphics are generally well designed, her arty cycads in one scene look weirdly like ghostly giant humans marching among a herd of sauropods, and elsewhere some dinosaurs seem to have foliage sprouting out of their bodies. Human figures added for scale are all silhouettes. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Though rough around the edges, it’s witty on occasion and chock full of dinosaurs throughout. (Informational picture book. 7-10)Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-62795-164-7
Page Count: 72
Publisher: Shelter Harbor Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 10, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
It’s got a few quirky bits, but it’s lackluster overall.
Pop-up dinosaurs, both fossilized and fully fleshed out, join Mesozoic contemporaries in a series of museum displays.
The single-topic spreads are up-to-date but designed to evoke the dusty atmosphere of old-style dinosaur halls (emphasizing this conceit, some are even labeled “Rooms”). They combine cramped blocks of information in smallish type with images of beasts and bones done in a style that resembles the faded naturalism of early-20th-century museum murals—or, in the “Fossil Room,” a desktop covered in paleontological notes with paper clips and coffee stains. Occasional inset spinners and attached booklets supply additional dino details. A tab-activated flipbook attempts to demonstrate tectonic drift, but readers have to go fairly slowly to assimilate it all, which blunts the effect. Amid pale silhouettes representing modern museum visitors, the prehistoric creatures, nearly all of which are small and drably colored, rear up individually or parade along in sedate, motley groups until a closing display and mention of genetic engineering promise a possible future with pet velociraptors.
It’s got a few quirky bits, but it’s lackluster overall. (Informational pop-up picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-7636-9687-0
Page Count: 14
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Sept. 17, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Pretty but insubstantial.
Fifty dinosaurs and kindred contemporaries display their hues in this large-format portrait gallery.
A greater mismatch between the pictures and the accompanying descriptive comments would be hard to imagine. Arranged in no discernable order one or two per spread, Sewell’s dinosaurs float benignly in static poses against white backgrounds. Figures mostly look flat and are roughly the same size, so there are no cues to relative scale. Rather than opening to display jagged dentifrices, mouths are usually closed, often set in small smiles, and the artist indicates details of scales, skin, and other features with just a perfunctory line or color change. Said colors sometimes make vivid contrasts—Velociraptor sports a downright garish mix of blood red and turquoise—but are for the most part pretty blends of hues. In contrast to the art’s weightless harmony, the narrative goes for the gusto: Ceratosaurus “was easily distinguishable by two devil horns, a fearsome nasal spike, a ridge of spikes down its back, and a set of huge gnashers designed for ripping apart the flesh of anything it came across.” Quetzalcoatlus “must have been a worrying sight, the size of a fighter jet wheeling round the sky.” References to “slow-footed” T. rex and “cunning” Utahraptor as well as a claim that Troodons “weren’t exactly rocket scientists” indicate a loose grasp of the difference between fact and speculation to boot.
Pretty but insubstantial. (Nonfiction. 8-10)Pub Date: Oct. 9, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-61689-716-1
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
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