Not the duo’s best, but fans will enjoy the effort.
“There was an old scientist who swallowed a dinosaur. / I don’t know why she swallowed a dinosaur, but she went to explore.”
She swallows a fern to feed the saurian, then a rock and a pick and a dustpan. In between the old scientist’s gastronomical feats, two children, one tan-skinned and one light-skinned—ask each other questions or spout facts about dinosaurs and paleontology. “Fossils are rocks containing traces of the past.” “Evidence of plants and animals built to last!” The book, the latest of Colandro’s many takes on the “There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly” song, closes with the old scientist, the kids, and the dinosaurs visiting a museum of natural history. With a rhyme scheme that is often as strained as the conceit of the voracious old lady, Colandro makes another foray into nonfiction that is relatively light on facts (previous titles have explored holidays, the seasons, astronomy, and undersea life). Lee is again along to offer his signature bug-eyed and scribbly illustrations that can be a bit unnerving at times. The children’s rhyming banter in speech bubbles interrupts the old lady patter, making the whole at once familiar and clunky. Paleo facts and a scavenger hunt at the end might add to the instruction and the fun respectively. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Not the duo’s best, but fans will enjoy the effort. (Informational picture book. 6-10)Pub Date: May 3, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-338-66840-7
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Cartwheel/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Almost entirely old news but nevertheless a must for libraries in need of replacement copies.
A lightly revised survey of current dino-knowledge, updating the original 2005 edition.
“Lightly” is the key word here, as aside from one partially redrawn illustration and a few minor emendations, the changes are limited to editorial tweaks. Gibbons opens with the great extinction event, shows crews of paleontologists—including several women but all save one white, as before—at work, goes on to profile seven “groups” of dinosaurs from prosauropods to ornithopods, then closes with a link to modern birds. Considering the almost frenetic pace of new fossil discoveries, this is all something of a missed opportunity: There is no mention of Patagotitan mayorum, for instance, the largest land animal ever, nor, aside from the carried-over Archaeopteryx, are feathered dinosaurs represented beyond a specimen of Oviraptor in one illustration that has been recast as Anzu with the addition of a few inconspicuous feathery squiggles on the forelimbs. Still, the toothy T. rex on the cover is as riveting as ever, and despite being so loosely drawn that some Maiasaura are simply relabeled here as Edmontosaurus, another genus entirely, enough dinosaurs crowd the sparely detailed prehistoric scenes within to please even the most demanding fans.
Almost entirely old news but nevertheless a must for libraries in need of replacement copies. (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: June 12, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-8234-4008-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2018
Pretty but insubstantial.
Fifty dinosaurs and kindred contemporaries display their hues in this large-format portrait gallery.
A greater mismatch between the pictures and the accompanying descriptive comments would be hard to imagine. Arranged in no discernable order one or two per spread, Sewell’s dinosaurs float benignly in static poses against white backgrounds. Figures mostly look flat and are roughly the same size, so there are no cues to relative scale. Rather than opening to display jagged dentifrices, mouths are usually closed, often set in small smiles, and the artist indicates details of scales, skin, and other features with just a perfunctory line or color change. Said colors sometimes make vivid contrasts—Velociraptor sports a downright garish mix of blood red and turquoise—but are for the most part pretty blends of hues. In contrast to the art’s weightless harmony, the narrative goes for the gusto: Ceratosaurus “was easily distinguishable by two devil horns, a fearsome nasal spike, a ridge of spikes down its back, and a set of huge gnashers designed for ripping apart the flesh of anything it came across.” Quetzalcoatlus “must have been a worrying sight, the size of a fighter jet wheeling round the sky.” References to “slow-footed” T. rex and “cunning” Utahraptor as well as a claim that Troodons “weren’t exactly rocket scientists” indicate a loose grasp of the difference between fact and speculation to boot.
Pretty but insubstantial. (Nonfiction. 8-10)Pub Date: Oct. 9, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-61689-716-1
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
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