Melodrama is the name of the game in this tall-format browsing item. With jaw-dropping precision, a dozen specialist illustrators depict scaled, spotted, crested, feathered, but mainly toothy, predators attacking similarly decorated prey, prowling alertly, or ominously, just seeming to catch sight of the viewer. Like the art, the text incorporates recent discoveries and theories, though its brevity makes for repetitiveness; an assertion that Velociraptor could “bite off huge chunks of meat at a time” needs rephrasing;, and not every prehistoric critter shown is identified. Considering the violence in nearly every scene, there is surprisingly little blood, but strict realism is not what this is about. Dinosaur and monster fans may be left wide-eyed, but they'll find more to chew over in Dougal Dixon’s Amazing Dinosaurs (p. 128). (Web sites, chart of groups, index) (Nonfiction. 8-11)
Pub Date: May 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-689-83276-1
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2000
Patrick’s beloved dinosaurs (Patrick’s Dinosaurs, illustrated by Donald Carrick, 1983, etc.) enter the new millennium with an updated imaginative flight. Patrick, who locates dinosaurs on the Internet, is unaware that the dinosaurs have been observing him from their own planet; he is whisked away one night by the friendly Flato in a “giant bumblebee” of a spaceship. When Patrick lands in a dinosaur schoolyard, a clever role reversal takes place and he finds himself the human equivalent of dinosaur “show and tell.” In one particularly funny moment, Patrick is grilled with questions such as, “What is it like to be warm-blooded? Did you hatch from an egg? What is your favorite food?” A soccer game ensues, shadowed by the arrival of a foot-stomping, tree-cracking tyrannosaurus rex. Patrick is hustled back aboard the spaceship, and lands safely back in his own bedroom, where, instead of stars, he dreams of dinosaurs. The interwoven dinosaur facts of the earlier books are absent here, other than identifying a few plant-eaters, and the author still refers to the apatopsaurus as a brontosaurus. Nevertheless, dinosaur-enthusiasts will welcome the return of their long-necked, personable friends, which Milgrim depicts as cuddly, cartoon-like, Barneyesque blue, green, and purple creatures. (Picture book. 3-7)
Pub Date: Sept. 20, 1999
ISBN: 0-395-50949-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1999
Dinosaurs break out of their terrarium confines, taking two brothers for a wild ride, in this junior Jurassic Park from Griffith (Dream Meadow, 1994, etc.). Every kid’s dinosaur daydream becomes reality when 12-year-old Nathan tosses younger brother Ryan’s fossilized egg across the room, where it lands in the center of Ryan’s terrarium. As mist envelops the bedroom, desks and chairs recede and carpets become squishy; the boys find themselves lost in a larger-than-life swampy, volcanic habitat, whose rollicking, rampaging residents are giant dinosaurs and insects. Nathan and Ryan easily accept their situation in the face of immediate danger from an ornery coelophysis, a reptilian home-wrecker who steals a mother hadrosaur’s nest eggs; each brief, subsequent episode introduces a new dinosaur, anticipated by Ryan, who knows the attributes of the plastic creatures from his terrarium. Despite a repetitive plot, Griffith competently varies the action and description of the boys’ alternating thrill and terror in the face of such creatures as a “gigantic, glittering carnivore,” or the threat of a lava-spewing volcano. Some irksome banter between the brothers—Nathan constantly muddling dinosaur names with Ryan just as regularly correcting him—doesn’t detract from the screeches, wails, and shrieks that will certainly entice newly independent readers into the pages. (b&w illustrations, not seen) (Fiction. 8-11)
Pub Date: April 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-688-15324-0
Page Count: 97
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1998
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