STEAM-y fare for both students of science and fans of myth.
Wide-ranging reflections on the legends and possible real origins of fantastical beasts and beings.
Encarnación’s page-filling views of swooping dragons, leaping bunyips, and other mythological creatures add dramatic notes to Shreeve’s profiles and speculations, while accompanying arrays of smaller photos, paleontological reconstructions, and old works of art provide unusual depth of field. Her first entry, for example, focuses on griffins: The author starts out by inviting readers to imagine an ancient Scythian horsewoman coming upon a big, beaked skull on a central Asian ridge; her attempts to make sense of the fossil might have given rise to the myth of a half-lion, half-eagle creature. From there, the author goes on to describe modern dinosaur discoveries in the Gobi, griffins in legend as well as art and literature up to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, whether griffins could hypothetically fly (considering their weight-to-wingspan ratios), and what we know from archaeological remains about the place of women (“The real Amazons”) in Scythian culture. Other entries offer similarly wide-angled overviews for subjects ranging from various cultures’ versions of mermaids and fairies to the “ship-sinking, sailor-munching” kraken. “Could there be grains of truth at the hearts of these legends?” The rare mix of lore and science will certainly leave readers in a thoughtful mood.
STEAM-y fare for both students of science and fans of myth. (maps, author’s note, glossary, source list) (Nonfiction. 10-13)Pub Date: July 21, 2026
ISBN: 9781665941006
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2026
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Required reading for serious dinophiles.
Thimmesh (Lucy Long Ago, 2009) again explores the border between science and speculation in this thoughtful look at how paleontologists and, in particular, “paleoartists” reconstruct prehistoric creatures from fossil evidence.
It’s “guesswork,” admits one artist. “But it’s guesswork based on science.” The author explains how surviving evidence—including fossilized bone fragments, plant matter, bits of skin and, recently, feathers, prehistoric “trackways” (preserved pathways of dino footprints) and similar physical features in modern animals—is assembled and interpreted by scientists. She also traces the evolution of dino art, from Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins’ fanciful reconstructions of heavy-bodied giant lizards to today’s images of quick, deft, graceful creatures. In support, examples of Hawkins’ approximations and the once-authoritative dinosaur paintings of Charles R. Knight from the first half of the 20th century contrast sharply with more detailed and dramatic scenes, often of the same dinosaurs, by Greg Paul and other currently active artists the author has interviewed. Sketch pages, alternative color patterns on the same model dino, and facing images of a Deinonychus before and after the discovery of fossilized feathers provide further insight into paleoart’s methods, challenges and rewards.
Required reading for serious dinophiles. (biographical appendix, source list, glossary, index) (Nonfiction. 11-13)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-547-99134-4
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2013
Readers in search of unalloyed wish fulfillment thickly layered with melodramatic posturing and gore-free, comics-style...
A bullying victim saves Earth after his brain is transferred into the body of a T. Rex.
Stomped flat by a huge green foot in the wake of a humiliating encounter with aptly named white classmate Melvin Goonowitz, Ralph, a nerdy boy with light-brown skin, wakes to discover that thanks to local handyman/superscientist Professor Overdrive, he’s not dead but inhabiting a toothy, if tiny-armed, dinosaur brought from the distant past. Why? Because Earth is commanded to send a champion to join 10,000 other gladiators in the interstellar Coliseum of Crunch to fight one another for the continued existence of their planets. Next to the wildly diverse array of glowering, garishly hued, mightily thewed aliens filling the graphic panels, Ralph looks like Barney’s little green brother—but with pluck and luck he not only bumbles his way to an epic win, he rescues a blue-skinned new friend from a sexual predator. Back to Earth in triumph he goes to scare Goonowitz into peeing his pants, then switch into a boy again (in a cloned bod courtesy of Professor Overdrive) with an ongoing new mission to protect little guys from getting picked on. A note about real gladiators of the ancient Roman sort is tacked on at the end.
Readers in search of unalloyed wish fulfillment thickly layered with melodramatic posturing and gore-free, comics-style violence need look no further. (Graphic fantasy/science fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: Oct. 24, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4494-7208-5
Page Count: 180
Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2017
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