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
A common topic ably presented—with a participatory element adding an unusual and brilliant angle.
To the tune of a familiar ditty, budding paleontologists can march, dig, and sift with a crew of dinosaur hunters.
Modeling her narrative after “Here We Go ’Round the Mulberry Bush,” Lendroth (Old Manhattan Has Some Farms, 2014, etc.) invites readers to add appropriate actions and gestures as they follow four scientists—modeled by Kolar as doll-like figures of varied gender and racial presentation, with oversized heads to show off their broad smiles—on a dig. “This is the way we clean the bones, clean the bones, clean the bones. / This is the way we clean the bones on a warm and sunny morning.” The smiling paleontologists find, then carefully excavate, transport, and reassemble the fossil bones of a T. rex into a museum display. A fleshed-out view of the toothy specimen on a wordless spread brings the enterprise to a suitably dramatic climax, and unobtrusive notes in the lower corners capped by a closing overview add digestible quantities of dino-detail and context. As in Jessie Hartland’s How the Dinosaur Got to the Museum (2011), the combination of patterned text and bright cartoon pictures of scientists at accurately portrayed work offers just the ticket to spark or feed an early interest in matters prehistoric.
A common topic ably presented—with a participatory element adding an unusual and brilliant angle. (Informational picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-62354-104-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Review Posted Online: Dec. 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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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