A skimpy alternative to Adrian Lister and Martin Ursell’s Ice Age Tracker’s Guide (2010).
A small bison meets some ice age megafauna in this prehistoric ramble.
Assuring his mom that “I’m big now. I’m not scared!” little Toby scampers off. He collides with a grumpy woolly rhinoceros, introduces himself to a Megatherium, wonders at a woolly mammoth’s tusks, and sidles anxiously past a handful of other Pleistocene creatures—including a group of fur-clad humans—before gamboling back to safety. Along with exchanged greetings, each encounter comes with a side box of descriptive facts and comments, plus a small image of the animal posed next to a human (in modern dress) for comparison. Young viewers will marvel at the succession of massive ruminants and predators, which Lillington renders in watercolors with reasonable accuracy, if anthropomorphic facial expressions. He offers measurements in metric units only (except for humans, whose weight is opaquely designated “average”). Rather anticlimactically, he caps his gallery with a perfunctory, unillustrated list of “some other amazing ice age animals that Toby didn’t get to meet!”
A skimpy alternative to Adrian Lister and Martin Ursell’s Ice Age Tracker’s Guide (2010). (Informational picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: Aug. 11, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-909263-58-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Flying Eye Books
Review Posted Online: March 31, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Eye-brightening visuals in search of a better text.
A mishmash of prehistoric fact and fancy, well overmatched by illustrations featuring images of full-sized dinos that look just as real as the photographed children who pose around or on them.
With a similar premise to Bernard Most’s classic If the Dinosaurs Came Back (1978) but without even its loose brand of internal logic, the author introduces 26 dinosaurs by name and suggests a supposed occupation or consequence. These often appear to be entirely arbitrary: “If a Tarbosaurus lived in my town… / …he and his cousin, Tyrannosaurus Rex, could have a hamburger eating contest!” In frequently clumsy phrasing (Corythosaurus “had hundreds of little teeth inside of her cheeks to chew with”), added dinosaur “Factprints” on each spread offer mixes of “facts” that sometimes contradict fossil evidence, as with a claim that Liopleurodon was larger than the blue whale. Others are just pure speculation: Maiasaura “would be very gentle with tiny human children” and Parasaurolophus calls “sounded like notes played on a French horn, or even a deep-throated trombone or bassoon.” On the other hand, though many bear human expressions, Eggleton’s dinosaurs are both realistically detailed and convincingly integrated into playgrounds and other familiar modern settings. The most recent reference in the bibliography is dated 2006, and one is as old as 1988.
Eye-brightening visuals in search of a better text. (index, not seen) (Picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-62636-176-8
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Sky Pony Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 13, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2013
Donald is no Douglas Florian (Dinothesaurus, 2009), but even rabid young dino fans will come away with a clearer sense of...
The author of Dino Tracks (2013) adopts a broader purview, introducing in verse 13 things we can infer about dinosaurs from fossil and other evidence.
The paleontology is better than the poetry. Singable, theoretically, to the tune of “Itsy Bitsy Spider,” each two-stanza entry takes on a single subject: “So what’s with all the feathers? Could the dinos fly? / Maybe they helped keep a dino warm and dry. / Or they might have helped to show off to a mate. / That’s the way a peacock tries to get a date!” Donald also describes the fossilized contents of “Dino Poop” and dino stomachs (“What’s For Dinner”), preserved hints about skin and coloration, sounds possibly produced by the hollow crests of duck-billed species and like topics. The poems, arranged in no apparent order, end with a mention of modern birds—followed by expansive notes (in prose) and a page of study questions. Morrison adds both helpful visual detail and plenty of action with facing views of crumpled fossils and reconstructed prehistoric scenes featuring toothy predators and heavily armored plant eaters in loud, mottled colors.
Donald is no Douglas Florian (Dinothesaurus, 2009), but even rabid young dino fans will come away with a clearer sense of what fossil clues tell us. (bibliography) (Informational picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-62855-450-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Arbordale Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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