Review by Booklist Review
Ages 5-8. In this wordless picture book, Rohmann sets the scene in a natural-history museum, where the dinosaur hall suddenly time-shifts into the Age of Reptiles (or were the dinosaurs the ancestors of today's birds?). During a thunderstorm, a bird flies among the dinosaur skeletons in the majestic hall. The scene subtly changes, as the walls become a landscape, the stone columns turn into trees, and the bones flesh out into living creatures. Swallowed by one of the dinosaurs, the bird flies down its throat, only to find the flesh thinning out to the bone framework again and the museum reappearing. The bird flies free again, out of the beast and out of the building. It's a short trip, but kids fascinated by dinosaurs may enjoy this vicarious voyage back in time. The handsome, atmospheric paintings heighten the drama as they tell their simple, somewhat mysterious, and quite short story. ~--Carolyn Phelan
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Yes, no--it's a metaphor! Rohmann's wordless first book shows a bird flying into a dinosaur museum one dark and stormy night. The bird flits about, perching on a dinosaur jaw and soaring on. As it flies past one particular behemoth, the bones of the creature are suddenly cloaked in flesh; the bird has entered a prehistoric landscape. A dinosaur eventually swallows the bird, but as it wings its way down the creature's throat and through its digestive system, the would-be predator is transformed to a skeleton and the bird returns once again to the museum hall. The meaning of this exercise is unclear, although a jacket note explains that Rohmann was ``inspired by the theory that birds are the modern relatives of the dinosaurs.'' The target audience will likely be mystified. Slightly older readers, however, might be intrigued by the time-travel conceit and the scientifically minded will be wowed by Rohmann's oil paintings, which capture the textures of bone, tooth, eyeball, etc., with as much attentiveness and morbidity as, say, an 18th-century still life of gamebirds. Ages 4-9. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
PreS-Gr 4-In this wordless picture book, a bird flies into a museum's dinosaur hall during a storm-charged night. Suddenly, time slips away-the walls disappear, the gigantic skeletons become fully fleshed-out behemoths roaming a prehistoric landscape, and the bird is placed in peril. This gorgeously illustrated flight of fancy can inspire creative endeavors or paleontological research. (c) Copyright 2013. 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 Horn Book Review
In this wordless fantasy, told through spectacular, detailed paintings, a bird flies into a shadowy museum hall of dinosaur skeletons and returns to the time when the dinosaurs lived. The fascinating idea behind the story -- that birds are descended from dinosaurs -- is mentioned only on the book jacket; but, even without knowing all the facts, readers will thrill to see the bird's close-up encounters with the great beasts. From HORN BOOK 1994, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Cinematically, lightning strikes an ecclesiastical-looking building even before this wordless book's title spread, on which a bird flies into its barrel-vaulted hall. But this is no church: the figures that top these columns are Mesozoic, not medieval, while the dinosaur skeletons in the otherwise empty space suggest a surreal museum. As the bird flies from the ancient bones toward their shadows, cast by the lightning, it's transported (in an arresting visual segue) to the dinosaurs' era. Several entrancing spreads later, it flutters away from a mild-eyed giant to confront one less benign. Snapped up, it flutters down a gullet- -and out past airy ribs, into the museum. Rohmann gives the excursion compelling immediacy by using intense colors and arresting points of view. In his beautifully composed spreads, the museum's glowering sandstone hues are imaginatively played off against the early world's innocent sky blue and vegetable green, the tiny, lithe bird against the lumbering primeval giants, flesh against bone, shadow against substance. A splendid debut. (Picture book. 4-9)
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
