Danny and his dinosaur (who, although he has been Danny's friend since 1958, has never been given a name) are off again, this time to summer camp, and everyone has a wonderful time, including readers. Danny's dinosaur makes everything more fun—racing (he needs to take only one step to win), rowing (he's the boat), hiking (he can offer all the tired hikers a ride home), eating a lot of toasted marshmallows (guess who eats the most?), or sleeping under the stars (no cot is big enough for a dinosaur). Hoff's simple prose and cartoon illustrations make a delightful book for beginning readers, with enough difficult words—ketchup and pizza- -to keep the story interesting, and enough clues in the illustrations to ensure new readers success. Every collection will have room for this welcome addition to the popular series. (Picture book. 3-7)
Pub Date: May 31, 1996
ISBN: 0-06-026439-X
Page Count: 32
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
Half a dozen lime-green dinosaurs are the stars of this delightful easy reader that offers most of the best qualities of the genre: rhyming text, a jolly rhythm, funny characters and lots of action. The well-written, brief text follows the dancing dinosaurs in a school-library setting as they dance right out of the pages of an open book and into mischief around the school and playground. The librarian, an African-American woman with glasses, and one male student follow the dinosaurs, but the action focuses firmly on the out-of-control dinosaurs. Though this is intended for new readers who are just starting to sound out words, both the storyline and appealing art are strong enough to work as a read-aloud for younger children as well. These dancing dinos have legs, and they ought to pop back out of their book for more rollicking adventures for new readers. (Easy reader. 4-7)
Pub Date: July 11, 2006
ISBN: 0-375-83241-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2006
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
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