Review by Booklist Review
Ages 2-6. Focusing on dinosaur characteristics, this offering uses lavish color, stylized shapes, and large print to attract the youngest fans.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Barton's economical book does not scrimp on details or ebullient hues. In colors straight out of a crayon box he provides children with a genuine ``first'' dinosaur book. The endpapers provide a vivid glossary of dinosaurs, with names and phonetic pronunciations underneath each picture. And then the sweet text: ``A long time ago there were dinosaurs. There were dinosaurs with horns and dinosaurs with spikes . . . . There were fierce dinosaurs and scared dinosaurs.'' That particular line is illustrated with a black cloudy sky and jagged yellow lightning; the simple expressions of fear on the dinosaurs' faces will reassure readers that even these mightiest of creatures could have been afraid of the same things children are. Ages 3-6. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
PreS-Gr 1-- Barton's radiant pallette of Play-Doh colors is perfect for dinosaurs. His illustrations capture the plasticity and vividness of children's own artwork, without patronizing or making fun of his young audience. More than Gibbons' Dinosaurs (Holiday, 1987) or Aliki's My Visit to the Dinosaurs (Crowell, 1985), Barton conveys the primordial sense of excitement that draws children to these beasts. Despite the illustrations' simplicity, Barton's dinosaurs' expressions are not mammalian smiles; they have a saurian quality all their own. The endpapers identify the creatures by scientific name and pronunciation. Barton wisely keeps his text simple, describing dinosaurs only by size and physical features (``There were dinosaurs with sails on their backs, and dinosaurs with hard bony heads''), letting his drawings portray who owned which horns, teeth, tail, and spikes. This superb introduction for the very young shares the excitement of dinosaurs with its audience, without tangling their attention spans in boring details.-- Cathryn A. Camper, Minneapolis Public Library (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Using an extremely simple text, the author of several informational books for the very young--on such subjects as wheels, airports, and boats--takes on the animal world with a look at a favorite topic: ""A long time ago. . .There were dinosaurs with horns and dinosaurs with spikes."" Each beast mentioned is represented in glowing, solid, unrealistic color (e.g., an orange dinosaur against a flat pink sky; a bright green tyrannosaurus against a red volcano erupting pink smoke); but the effect is not only striking but conveys a genuine, if very elementary, sense of these long-ago beasts. Scientific names and their pronunciations are given on the endpapers. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
