"GOOD NIGHT, DINOSAURS"

A tongue-in-cheek lullaby book of small good-night poems for dinosaurs. ""Three tyrannosaurus rexes/Once lay dreaming of their breakfasts/In what's now the state of Texas."" Sierra (Nursery Tales Around the World, 1995, etc.) uses comic neologisms (tyrannograndma and scaredysauruses among them) and ends every poem with a gentle refrain. If the meter ocassionally stumbles, or the rhymes are sometimes forced, the mood of the book is always delightful; this is an affectionate view of the great beasts. Chess depicts dinosaur families gathered around their young; the offbeat charm of these watercolor scenes compensates for any imperfections in the poems. Each page has a handsome yellow border, framing the text on one page and the picture on the other, snugging the book like a baby's blanket.