In this bland tale, a hatchling dinosaur barely bigger than one of his several siblings’ feet gets a chance to shine when his entire family becomes mired in sticky mud. Timidly setting out on his own, he appeals for help to a humongous and clumsy “Long Neck,” who galumphs to the rescue. The Littlest Dinosaur earns the praise of his erstwhile dismissive father, after which he and the now more self-confident Long Neck become the “greatest of friends.” Ably underscoring their immense size differential, Foreman casts Littlest as a puny triceratops walking on two legs (his sibs walk on four, except when they’re playing soccer), and colors the Long Neck a deep blue that makes him seem all the more massive. Still, next to the undersized but intrepid protagonists in Jean Willis’s Cottonball Colin (2008), and Kevin Sherry’s I’m the Biggest Thing in the Ocean! (2007), Littlest isn’t going to make much of an impression. Nor will the routine plot or language. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: May 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-8027-9759-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Walker
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Tried and true, both in content and formula.
Parting—of the temporary rather than permanent kind—is the latest topic to be dino-sorted in this venerable series’ 14th outing.
Nobody dies and the series is showing no signs of flagging, so reading anything ominous into the title is overthinking it. Instead, Teague and Yolen once again treat readers to a succession of outsized, gaily patterned dinosaurs throwing tantrums or acting out, this time as dad packs up for a business trip or even just sets off to work, grandparents pause at the door for goodbyes, mom drops her offspring off at school on a first day, parents take a date night, or a moving van pulls up to the house. Per series formula, the tone switches partway through when bad behavior gives way to (suggested) better: “They tell all the grown-ups / just how they are feeling. / It helps right away / for fast dinosaur healing.” Hugs, kisses, and a paper heart might also be more constructive responses than weeping, clinging, and making mayhem. Dinosaurian pronouns mostly alternate between he and she until switching to the generic their in the last part. In the art, the human cast mixes figures with different racial presentations and the date-night parents are an interracial couple, but there is no evident sign of same-gender or other nonnormative domestic situations.
Tried and true, both in content and formula. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 28, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-338-36335-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
Washburn’s illustrations take a nonthreatening to the subject, casting the rosy-toned dinosaurs as friendly rather than...
A highly accessible entry in the Let’s-Read-and-Find-Out Science series that takes a look at baby dinosaurs, primarily maiasaurs and oviraptors.
Zoehfeld (How Mountains are Made, 1995, etc.) explains how the current information on the peaceful, lizard-like dinosaurs who sipped from streams over 70 million years ago has been extrapolated from fossils, and that the rest is surmised from studying reptile and bird behavior and habits, which provide scientists with clues as to the nesting, nurturing of, and lives of baby dinosaurs. Hatching from small, oval eggs, the newborns ate berries while one member guarded the nest from meat-eating, nest-raiding predators. The author speculates as to the role of fossilized plants that covered the eggs of the maiasaurs and what the discovery of oviraptor skeletons may reveal about the feeding of the young.
Washburn’s illustrations take a nonthreatening to the subject, casting the rosy-toned dinosaurs as friendly rather than imposing. (Picture book/nonfiction. 5-8)Pub Date: Sept. 30, 1999
ISBN: 0-06-027141-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1999
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