Review by Horn Book Review
After Max visits "the big museum," he has "LOTS of questions" about dinosaurs and sends letters to the museum's T. rex. Disappointingly, the responses (actually from curator "Dinosaur Dora") are more whimsical than substantive. "That's why T. rexes have such small hands--so we can hold a pencil." Brightly colored dinos and foldout letters and cards lend this book only momentary appeal. (c) Copyright 2018. 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
A T. Rex and a 6-year-old fan with questions strike up a lively correspondence.At the suggestion of a curator, young Max writes a fan letter to his favorite dino at the museum and gets a fierce reply: "I do NOT write nice letters to small children. I eat them." Not daunted, Max continues to send chatty queriessome of which, along with T. Rex's first letter, are glued-in sheets or cards. T. Rex loosens up in later exchanges, receives Max's gifts of a lost tooth and a "Sausagesaurus" (a rubber duck, as it turns out) with thanks, and, in a final email message, promises not to eat him when he visits again. Sticking to more traditional media, Max at the end crafts a home-made greeting card to proclaim that the two will be "Dinopals forever!" Though T. Rex's stationery comes from a fictitious museum in South Carolina, the post boxes in the illustrations and the overall tone of the language reflect this import's British origins. Like Max and his interracial parents (dark-skinned dad, light-skinned mum), the dinosaurs exhibited in the museum are mostly smiling figures in O'Byrne's brightly colored cartoons.A lighthearted if unremarkable (and perhaps a bit outdated?) addition to the epistolary genre. (Novelty. 6-8) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
