Inane, both psychologically and plotwise.
Gregory wakes up in bed transformed…not into a giant cockroach, but a T. Rex.
Many’s deliberate riff on the premise of Kafka’s classic tale is the high point of this incoherent hash. For no reason beyond a physical change that only he can apparently see, the moment he rises on the morning he’s scheduled to present a school report on the extinction of the dinosaurs by meteorite, Gregory becomes a destructive monster. He rips his breakfast-cereal box apart with a roar, bellows when he realizes he’s left his diorama at home, and savagely destroys his classmates’ elaborate dino-projects. For this last act, rather than being punished or even scolded, he’s briefly sent to the office, then actually applauded once teacher and students understand that he was supposedly imitating a T. Rex. As if! In fact, only his harried single mom reacts realistically to his acting out. Jaskiel brings like murkiness to the illustrations, which feature a flailing white lad whose anxiety at a teacher’s question looks more like severe nausea and who in dino form looks like Barney’s anthropomorphic green cousin. At a convenient point Gregory changes back to a boy and, after deciding that night that T. Rexes aren’t all that cool, dreams of becoming a (presumably less aggressive) triceratops. In the pictures the adults are all white, but the students are a diverse group.
Inane, both psychologically and plotwise. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4556-2304-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Pelican
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2017
Sturdy split pages allow readers to create their own inventive combinations from among a handful of prehistoric critters. Hard on the heels of Flip-O-Saurus (2010) drops this companion gallery, printed on durable boards and offering opportunities to mix and match body thirds of eight prehistoric mammals, plus a fish and a bird, to create such portmanteau creatures as a “Gas-Lo-Therium,” or a “Mega-Tor-Don.” The “Mam-Nyc-Nia” places the head of a mammoth next to the wings and torso of an Icaronycteris (prehistoric bat) and the hind legs of a Macrauchenia (a llamalike creature with a short trunk), to amusing effect. Drehsen adds first-person captions on the versos, which will also mix and match to produce chuckles: “Do you like my nose? It’s actually a short trunk…” “I may remind you of an ostrich, because my wings aren’t built for flying…” “My tail looks like a dolphin’s.” With but ten layers to flip, young paleontologists will run through most of the permutations in just a few minutes, but Ball’s precisely detailed ink-and-watercolor portraits of each animal formally posed against plain cream colored backdrops may provide a slightly more enduring draw. A silhouette key on the front pastedown includes a pronunciation guide and indicates scale. Overall, a pleasing complement to more substantive treatments. (Novelty nonfiction. 6-8)
Pub Date: May 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-7892-1099-9
Page Count: 22
Publisher: Abbeville Kids
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2011
Formulaic but not stale…even if it does mine previous topical material rather than expand it.
A guide to better behavior—at home, on the playground, in class, and in the library.
Serving as a sort of overview for the series’ 12 previous exercises in behavior modeling, this latest outing opens with a set of badly behaving dinos, identified in an endpaper key and also inconspicuously in situ. Per series formula, these are paired to leading questions like “Does she spit out her broccoli onto the floor? / Does he shout ‘I hate meat loaf!’ while slamming the door?” (Choruses of “NO!” from young audiences are welcome.) Midway through, the tone changes (“No, dinosaurs don’t”), and good examples follow to the tune of positive declarative sentences: “They wipe up the tables and vacuum the floors. / They share all the books and they never slam doors,” etc. Teague’s customary, humongous prehistoric crew, all depicted in exact detail and with wildly flashy coloration, fill both their spreads and their human-scale scenes as their human parents—no same-sex couples but some are racially mixed, and in one the man’s the cook—join a similarly diverse set of sibs and other children in either disapprobation or approving smiles. All in all, it’s a well-tested mix of oblique and prescriptive approaches to proper behavior as well as a lighthearted way to play up the use of “please,” “thank you,” and even “I’ll help when you’re hurt.”
Formulaic but not stale…even if it does mine previous topical material rather than expand it. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-338-36334-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Blue Sky/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020
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