Go, Cryptoclidus! (Picture book. 6-9)
Another prehistoric predicament from the creators of Ankylosaur Attack (2011) and Pterosaur Trouble (2013), with similarly nongory but otherwise photorealistic illustrations.
Gliding sinuously through shallow, sunlit waters crowded with tentacled ammonites and early fish, a young Cryptoclidus follows her mother and the rest of the plesiosaur pod. They feed peacefully on squidlike belemnites—until, distracted by a reef’s nooks and crannies, the saurian protagonist becomes separated and attracts the attention of hungry Liopleurodon, a much larger, predatory relative. Depicted from angles that show off their cetacean bulk, long-necked grace and crocodilian dentifrice to thrilling effect, both marine reptiles cut convincingly lifelike figures as they torpedo through equally realistic oceanscapes. Cryptoclidus makes an escape at last with a frantic leap over the reef’s jutting rocks and is reunited with her parent: “It was a big, wild, dangerous ocean, but they would swim it together. As a family.” Loxton stirs current theories about plesiosaur behavior and physiology into his melodramatic episode, expanding on them in an informative afterword.
Go, Cryptoclidus! (Picture book. 6-9)Pub Date: March 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-55453-633-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Kids Can
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2014
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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