A dino flop.
Twenty large, fossilized skeletons pose amid fleshed-out reconstructions of the originals and selected relatives in this dino gallery.
Though dark or atmospherically faded sepia backgrounds lend a superficial visual unity, the illustrations are all stock images, rendered in diverse styles and sometimes blurrily reproduced. Readers may wonder whether the author has even seen them, as the text and pictures are sometimes at odds. The painted portraits accompanying his suggestions that Gallimimus and Dromaeosaurus may have been feathered are bare-skinned, and he neglects to mention the pinions (or is that hair?) on a particularly colorful rendition of Leptoceratops. He also seems more focused on dropping scads of dino names (many of which are not in the index) than in systematically developing the title’s premise. He does explain the significance of large orbital and nasal cavities in fossil skulls, for instance, but not what “bony tendons” even are in one specimen or how an entire skeleton could be reconstructed for Pachycephalosaurus from just a skull. Also, he repeats information here, contradicts himself there, and presents different rationales for the belief that Iguanodon walked on two legs on consecutive spreads.
A dino flop. (timeline, glossary) (Nonfiction. 8-11)Pub Date: July 15, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-77085-717-9
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Firefly
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
Fine viewing, but more of an art exhibit than a systematic family history.
Recently discovered hints that most dinosaurs may have been feathered cap a gallery of prehistoric predecessors to today’s birds.
The presentation has more of a cobbled-together feel than Guiberson’s previous look at the deep past, The Greatest Dinosaur Ever (illustrated by Gennady Spirin, 2013). Despite the title, the book goes beyond feathers. Guiberson discusses how the colors of fossilized feathers can be deduced from the shapes of their microscopic melanosomes, but she also describes early appearances of other avian features such as wishbones and a two-legged stance. But that anatomical focus doesn’t extend to the illustrations, as in the dimly lit paintings, dinosaurs loom indistinctly, their colors muted and limbs tightly folded or otherwise angled so that structural details are hard to make out. Eoalulavis appears only as a few tiny figures winging past a pair of immense sauropods, and the towering ornithischian confronting a modern ostrich on the final spread isn’t identified at all. The portraits are arranged in rough chronological order, but there are no clues in text or pictures to the dinosaurs’ specific eras. Despite a reference to the “teeny wings” of Hesperornis and a few other breaks in tone, the author’s commentary is otherwise solid…until its grand but insupportable closing claim that birds now inhabit “every environment on Earth.”
Fine viewing, but more of an art exhibit than a systematic family history. (bibliography) (Informational picture book. 8-10)Pub Date: March 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8050-9828-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Unusually garish illustrations are the only mark of distinction here.
A broad gander at dinos and other toothy residents of the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods.
Chester opts for melodrama over any attempt at realism, floating on each spread a half-dozen or so prehistoric creatures posed in a limited range of side angles, rendered as flat figures in acidic, high-contrast hues and with mouths agape. Red is a particularly common color, as the violent rending of flesh begins on the title page. Even such herbivores as Triceratops or “gentle plant-eater” Nothronychus sport swathes of harsh vermilion on muzzles and backs. Brusatte, consultant on the miniseries Walking with Dinosaurs, likewise goes for the gusto: “What does Velociraptor do with this scary claw? It uses it first to hold down its victims, and then to slash open their guts.” Repeatedly warning young readers that any momentary distraction or laughing at “strange” features will result in being hunted down and eaten, the author delivers a standard assortment of likely facts and general speculations (without distinguishing between the two) on the habits and especially diets of extinct dinosaurs and reptiles, along with forced value judgements (“Deinocheirus is the weirdest dinosaur you’ve ever seen”), plus references to the supposed dispositions of various creatures and to front extremities as “hands” for an anthropomorphic overlay.
Unusually garish illustrations are the only mark of distinction here. (index, resource list) (Nonfiction. 8-11)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-84780-845-5
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Wide Eyed Editions
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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