I AM ALLOSAURUS

An invitation to meet a prehistoric predator and follow it from egg to exhibit.

Sounding like a slightly more articulate version of Guardians of the Galaxy’s Groot (“I am Allosaurus. I can run”), a theropod narrator hatches and survives. It avoids being eaten by larger toothy prowlers while chowing down on a dragonfly (when small) and a stegosaur (when fully grown), then passes in an abrupt page turn from Jurassic landscapes to a museum setting, towering as a fossil skeleton over human silhouettes with a final “I am Allosaurus. I am extinct.” The extreme terseness of the text and patterned repetition makes this an ideal choice for dinosaur lovers just stretching their own independent-reading legs. Along with depicting his dino with an arresting pattern of deep black stripes on a bright pink body, with vivid blue rings around its eyes, Bradley follows a current train of paleontological thought by adding a ruff of hairy feathers that vanishes as the animal matures. Dramatic shifts in perspective neatly capture scale as the reptile grows. Bradley also carefully keeps other flora and fauna in his painted scenes true to period and closes with notes on his subject’s anatomy, a map showing where Allosaurus remains have been found, and related information.

Meat and potatoes—er, more meat for hatchling dinosaur fans, with unusually eye-catching art.