Munro moves from architecture to paleontology for her latest Inside-Outside album, portraying each of eight familiar dinosaurs as a fossil skeleton and then, on the next spread, fleshing the specimen out and posing it in an open, natural setting with several other creatures of the same era. Though she takes a conservative course in using pale colors and only occasionally depicting skin with stripes or other patterns, young dinophiles will relish the cleanly drawn details and (on the alternate spreads) non-gory, easy-to-follow predator-prey chases in the backgrounds. Except for name labels (and their transliterations into English) there is no text until the closing visual keys, which are linked to a few sentences of basic information about each dinosaur plus identifications of other animals visible in each scene. Pre-readers in particular will be drawn to this prehistoric primer. (bibliography, web resources) (Informational picture book. 4-6)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-7614-5624-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Marshall Cavendish
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2009
Categories: CHILDREN'S DINOSAURS & PREHISTORIC CREATURES
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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 31, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2014
Categories: CHILDREN'S DINOSAURS & PREHISTORIC CREATURES
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Single parenting, T. Rex style.
Huge, roaring, toothy T. Rex beds down for the night in a handy empty cave—and wakes with a tiny hatchling theropod staring up at him adoringly: “Dada!” Bellowing, “You’re no Rex!” the discomfited dino lumbers off for a daily round of smashing rocks, uprooting trees, and scaring “every saurus” he sees. But Little Rex trots along and soon is pounding boulders and tearing out (small) trees of his own in imitation. Bonding ensues…and survives big Rex’s frank admission that he’s not Little Rex’s real father. “I hope I’m as terrifying as you when I grow up, Dad.” “I’ll make sure of it,” replies big Rex. “That’s what dads are for!” James never troubles to explain how Little Rex, or more precisely his egg, came to be left in the cave; evidently family arrangements “once upon about 65 million years ago” were fairly casual. Anyway, in splashy, melodramatic cartoon scenes featuring a variety of wide-eyed dinosaurs against a backdrop of erupting volcanoes, James exaggerates the size differential between the two rexes to comical effect, endows Little Rex with a cute overbite, and closes with shared smiles.
A cozy bit of new-family making—perhaps better not taken too literally. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: July 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7636-7294-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2016
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