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DINOSAURS! by Sheri Safran

DINOSAURS!

Pop-Up Paper Designs

by Sheri Safran ; illustrated by David Hawcock

Pub Date: Sept. 1st, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-85707-804-6
Publisher: Tango Books

Eight dinos pose fetchingly in this hand-sized pop-up gallery.

With no regard for either drama or comparative scale, Hawcock fashions his dinosaurs all roughly the same size and poses most nonthreateningly; Triceratops and several others even sport waggly tails. Moreover, aside from using mottled papers in various subdued, low-contrast hues for his full-body models, he plays it safe throughout by choosing subjects that will be familiar even to diaper-clad dinophiles and portraying each with flat, stylized features rather than going for any realism of detail or movement. The paper design is often clumsy too: Archeopteryx remains closed, and Stegosaurus stands at an angle even when their respective spreads are opened flat; Velociraptor, hanging in midleap, looks like it’s about to fall over; the tabs that attach the heads of the Velociraptor and the T. Rex. are clearly visible; and Diplodocus’ neck is bent to the side at an anatomically unlikely sharp right angle. Safran strains to add interest with bulleted lists of facts and factoids ranging from “imagine the size and number of its poos” to an incorrect claim that Diplodocus is “thought to be the longest dinosaur.”

Lacklusterus nonstarteris.

(Informational pop-up. 4-6)