For a series dubbed Tales of Prehistoric Life, this kickoff doesn’t offer much of a story, but it’s a memorable showcase for...
Two armored dinosaurs square off against a hungry T. Rex in this quick but unusually immersive prehistoric episode.
Even by current high standards, the full-spread art is uncommonly photorealistic—featuring Cretaceous creatures on which every lump, scale, feather and wrinkle is sharply defined and woodsy settings in which nearly every leaf, frond and tuft of moss can be picked out. The plot, in which a young ankylosaur is rebuffed by an injured older one but then returns to help out when a slavering (see the drool) tyrannosaur attacks, is no great shakes, but who cares? The main event is definitely the close-up views of craggy dino faces and the T. Rex’s massive, shiny, pointed dentifrice. No blood or wounds are visible, and the figures seem frozen in tableaus, but Loxton and co-illustrator Smith choose close-up angles that evoke both the massive size of the contenders and the drama of their encounter effectively.
For a series dubbed Tales of Prehistoric Life, this kickoff doesn’t offer much of a story, but it’s a memorable showcase for a new dino-artist team. (afterword) (Picture book. 6-9)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-55453-631-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Kids Can
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2011
Tried and true, both in content and formula.
Parting—of the temporary rather than permanent kind—is the latest topic to be dino-sorted in this venerable series’ 14th outing.
Nobody dies and the series is showing no signs of flagging, so reading anything ominous into the title is overthinking it. Instead, Teague and Yolen once again treat readers to a succession of outsized, gaily patterned dinosaurs throwing tantrums or acting out, this time as dad packs up for a business trip or even just sets off to work, grandparents pause at the door for goodbyes, mom drops her offspring off at school on a first day, parents take a date night, or a moving van pulls up to the house. Per series formula, the tone switches partway through when bad behavior gives way to (suggested) better: “They tell all the grown-ups / just how they are feeling. / It helps right away / for fast dinosaur healing.” Hugs, kisses, and a paper heart might also be more constructive responses than weeping, clinging, and making mayhem. Dinosaurian pronouns mostly alternate between he and she until switching to the generic their in the last part. In the art, the human cast mixes figures with different racial presentations and the date-night parents are an interracial couple, but there is no evident sign of same-gender or other nonnormative domestic situations.
Tried and true, both in content and formula. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 28, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-338-36335-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
In a life-cycle arc paralleling the one in Cyrus’ Tadpole Rex (2008), a tiny prehistoric ancestor to modern sea turtles hatches from a buried egg, scuttles across a beach into the sea, survives multiple hazards to grow into a mighty two-ton Archelon and then in season returns to shore to lay a clutch of her own. Injecting plenty of drama into his beach and sunlit undersea scenes with sudden close-ups and changes of scale, the illustrator vividly captures the hatchling’s vulnerability as she passes with her sibs beneath a towering T. Rex only to discover a world of toothy predators beneath the ocean’s rolling surface. And even full grown, though she can glide unheeding past sharks and even plesiosaurs, an encounter with a mosasaur “massive and dark: / muncher of archelon, / gulper of shark” sends her sliding hastily down to concealment in the billowing bottom sands. Like its subject, the rhymed text moves with grand deliberation, carrying the primeval story line to a clever transition between that ancient era and ours: “Gone is that sea and the creatures it knew. / Archelon. Mosasaur. Pterosaur, too. / Gone is the plesiosaur’s clam-cracking smile… / but full-body helmets are still in style” as “shells of all fashions continue to girdle / the middle of many a tortoise and turtle.” Never has time travel been so easy or so immersive. (author's note) (Informational picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: April 4, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-547-42924-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2011
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