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WHAT THE DINOSAURS DID LAST NIGHT by Refe Tuma Kirkus Star

WHAT THE DINOSAURS DID LAST NIGHT

A Very Messy Adventure

by Refe Tuma & Susan Tuma ; illustrated by Refe Tuma & Susan Tuma

Pub Date: Oct. 20th, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-316-33562-1
Publisher: Little, Brown

For anyone who doubts that plastic dinosaurs come to life and sneak out at night to make household messes, here’s photographic evidence.

As caught in the act by a trusty camera with “custom bacon modification to attract hungry dinosaurs,” toy dinos head first for the fridge but go on to turn the playroom, parents’ room, laundry room, and attic into domestic disaster areas. The scenes are littered with loose food and bric-a-brac, splashed with shaving cream and mustard, covered in tangles of yarn, spritzes of spray paint and, in the climactic living-room tableau, wild smears of dark brown goop that surely can’t be what it looks like. It’s not malicious mischief, as the accompanying commentary notes, but all in good fun, and eventually the dinos will go back to lying low…though, as a final shot of a busy rooftop launch pad reveals, they’ll always be up to something. The Tumas have much to answer for, as this album will join the many like scenes they have posted online as a record of their annual family “Dinovember” celebrations…which are already, no surprise at all, spawning fans and similar outbreaks of disorder in other locales.

The authors may well have created a monster with this deliciously chaotic notion.

(Picture book. 6-8)