Featuring both luridly colored beasts in melodramatic poses and plenty of savagely rent flesh, these prehistoric scenes will rivet young dinosaur fans. The plot—briefly told and perfunctory—follows a young predator as he squabbles with others of his kind, mates and then minds a clutch of hatchlings, claws away at prey both living and already dead, flees a fire and finally, successfully battles a rival for leadership of the pack. It’s the pictures of taloned (male—the females are plainer) raptors sporting turquoise feathers and bright red crowns hunting, fighting and fleeing that jump out. Though both text and paintings are subject to unusually severe breaks in continuity, this crowd-pleaser incorporates recent theories about what dinosaurs looked and acted like, along with plenty of action. (map, booklist, artist’s note) (Nonfiction. 9-11)
Pub Date: April 1, 2007
ISBN: 0-8109-5775-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2007
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
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
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