A strong new series for brand-new readers.
Dotlich’s text makes good use of assonance and internal rhymes to support new readers’ decoding skills in this story about a dinosaur who needs to clean up his bedroom before he can go outside to play ball.
Momasaur is displeased with the state of Digger’s room, and when he asks if he can go play ball with his friend, Stego, she replies sternly, “No….Your room is a mess.” Digger mistakes the word “mess” for “yes,” but Stego corrects him, and in a spirit of friendly generosity, offers to help him clean up. Digger continues to fail to attend carefully to others’ words as he confuses Stego’s helpful directions, mishearing “hook” as “book” and “bones” as “stones.” Then Stego becomes distracted and mistakes Momasaur’s final direction to put “hats” away as putting “cats” away. Digger catches the mistake as the poor cats meow from within an armoire, and then they quickly free them and tidy up the hats before going outside to play ball. Cartoonish illustrations seem like they’d be right at home in an animator’s studio, though background detail is a bit overdone and potentially distracting in a book with such a well-controlled text.
A strong new series for brand-new readers. (Early reader. 4-6)Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-222222-0
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2013
Well-trodden dino turf, but the grass is still fairly green.
A tongue-in-cheek look at some of the many ways that idle household dinosaurs can be put to work.
Jack casts a host of cartoon dinosaurs—most of them humongous, nearly all smiling and candy bright of hue—in roles as can openers, potato mashers, yard sweepers, umbrellas on rainy days, snowplows, garbage collectors, and like helpers or labor savers. Even babysitters, though, as Bailey aptly notes, “not all dinosaurs are suited to this work.” Still, “[t]he possibilities are amazing!” And even if there aren’t any handy dinos around, she concludes, any live-in octopus, sasquatch, kangaroo or other creature can be likewise exploited. A bespectacled, woolly-haired boy who looks rather a lot like Weird Al Yankovic serves as dino-wrangler in chief, heading up a multiethnic cast of kids who enjoy the dinosaurs’ services. As with all books of this ilk, the humor depends on subtextual visual irony. A group of kids happily flying pterosaur kites sets up a gag featuring a little boy holding a limp string tied to the tail of a grumpy-looking stegosaurus. Changes on this premise have been run over and over since Bernard Most’s If the Dinosaurs Came Back (1978), and though this iteration doesn’t have any fresh twists to offer, at least it’s bright and breezy enough to ward off staleness.
Well-trodden dino turf, but the grass is still fairly green. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: May 13, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-77049-568-5
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Tundra Books
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Shall we encourage offspring to be more polite? Yes, thank you. Perhaps they will stay that way.
Courtesy goes a long way, even with a T. Rex.
In a grocery store with understandably stunned-looking, wide-eyed shoppers looking on, Bowers sets up a series of encounters between a small girl with pigtails and a very large (and clumsy) green dino sporting pink-sequined glasses. Sierra provides rhymed prompts: “Commotion in the produce aisle! / The dinosaur upsets a pile / Of apples, and they roll away. / If you pick them up, what will she say?” Correct responses (“Thank you”) in large, bold type follow. Though some of the exchanges are problematic, as the child seems to be in the store alone—in one meeting, the dino offers her some snack food and in the checkout line gives her money when she runs short—the situations all engender a set of polite phrases from “Hello, I'm pleased to meet you” to “Excuse me,” “No, thank you” and the ever-useful “I'm sorry” that will come in handy in any setting. Take socialization skills to the next step with Sesyle Joslin’s timeless, Sendak-illustrated What Do You Say, Dear? (1958, 1986) and What Do You Do, Dear? (1961, 1993).
Shall we encourage offspring to be more polite? Yes, thank you. Perhaps they will stay that way. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-375-86720-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2011
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