So you think dinosaurs are extinct? On the contrary, avers Edwards, in the guise of a young researcher—they’re still around, though enjoying a very different lifestyle these days. Offering as proof a set of gleefully ornate “photographs” featuring oversized, gaily patterned dinosaurs sipping tea at an outdoor café, energetically playing fossilball, mincing down the street in size 800-Triple-E high heels and other pursuits, he observes that they “live in high-rises and like the night-life,” “floss with garden hoses,” “love haunting, romantic songs about tasty plants, damp soil and uprooted trees,” and, in conclusion, “really ARE clever.” Yes, clever enough, as it turns out, to filch this report and to set the Dinosaur Intelligence Agency after its author. Read with caution, and warn young dinophiles to do the same. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2006
ISBN: 1-55337-971-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Kids Can
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2006
Tried and true, both in content and formula.
Parting—of the temporary rather than permanent kind—is the latest topic to be dino-sorted in this venerable series’ 14th outing.
Nobody dies and the series is showing no signs of flagging, so reading anything ominous into the title is overthinking it. Instead, Teague and Yolen once again treat readers to a succession of outsized, gaily patterned dinosaurs throwing tantrums or acting out, this time as dad packs up for a business trip or even just sets off to work, grandparents pause at the door for goodbyes, mom drops her offspring off at school on a first day, parents take a date night, or a moving van pulls up to the house. Per series formula, the tone switches partway through when bad behavior gives way to (suggested) better: “They tell all the grown-ups / just how they are feeling. / It helps right away / for fast dinosaur healing.” Hugs, kisses, and a paper heart might also be more constructive responses than weeping, clinging, and making mayhem. Dinosaurian pronouns mostly alternate between he and she until switching to the generic their in the last part. In the art, the human cast mixes figures with different racial presentations and the date-night parents are an interracial couple, but there is no evident sign of same-gender or other nonnormative domestic situations.
Tried and true, both in content and formula. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 28, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-338-36335-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
Washburn’s illustrations take a nonthreatening to the subject, casting the rosy-toned dinosaurs as friendly rather than...
A highly accessible entry in the Let’s-Read-and-Find-Out Science series that takes a look at baby dinosaurs, primarily maiasaurs and oviraptors.
Zoehfeld (How Mountains are Made, 1995, etc.) explains how the current information on the peaceful, lizard-like dinosaurs who sipped from streams over 70 million years ago has been extrapolated from fossils, and that the rest is surmised from studying reptile and bird behavior and habits, which provide scientists with clues as to the nesting, nurturing of, and lives of baby dinosaurs. Hatching from small, oval eggs, the newborns ate berries while one member guarded the nest from meat-eating, nest-raiding predators. The author speculates as to the role of fossilized plants that covered the eggs of the maiasaurs and what the discovery of oviraptor skeletons may reveal about the feeding of the young.
Washburn’s illustrations take a nonthreatening to the subject, casting the rosy-toned dinosaurs as friendly rather than imposing. (Picture book/nonfiction. 5-8)Pub Date: Sept. 30, 1999
ISBN: 0-06-027141-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1999
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