My barely two-year-old suddenly seems excited by dinosaurs. She’s been marching along to Laurie Berkner’s “We Are the Dinosaurs” song for months, points out Barney in stores, and enjoyed a dinosaur ride at a festival we recently attended. I was sure I had a picture book or two about those giant prehistoric creatures on my bookcase, but only found this one after rifling through our numerous books. It has some really great (though somewhat scary) illustrations and puts those giant creatures into perspective. It’s one thing to get a tiny dinosaur toy in your Happy Meal; it’s quite another to stand side by side with those long-extinct animals.

THE BASICS
Gigantic! How Big Were the Dinosaurs? is a picture book that describes 14 dinos in very simple terms that preschoolers will understand. My guess is that the book is best suited to 3- to 6-year-olds but the vocabulary is tough and dinosaur-obsessed early readers would probably enjoy this one, too. For my two-year-old’s sake, I try to add editorial comments to engage her.

Each creature gets a two-page spread that illustrates its relative size, lists its name and the meaning of its name, and includes one sentence that describes its unique feature. Some of the names are tricky even for adult readers and some of the vocabulary used in the sentences can be difficult for young readers.

“The supergiant Seismosaurus shook the earth with its tremendous weight.”

The illustrations superimpose the prehistoric creatures with mostly modern-day items with which kids are familiar (although there is a Viking ship and a jousting knight pictured in two of them). This makes it easier to envision just how big the creatures really were, though it could cause some confusion over their existence. For instance, a gigantic Seismosaurus (earth-shaking lizard) towers over a construction site digger truck. Some of the illustrations, such as this one, also play on the unique feature of the dino at hand (ie, the earth-shaking dinosaur is paired with an earth-digging truck; a plate-armored Ankylosaurus is paired with a tank; and a Parasaurolophus, who is believed to have used its head to make a trumpeting call, is paired with a marching band trumpeter).

There are additional notes at the end of the book. Two pages list and feature illustrations of all of the creatures previously discussed and give additional information such as name pronunciation, height, weight, and year of discovery. There’s also an author’s note stipulating that the data we have for dinosaurs is a small sampling of what really existed and that scientists piece together the theories from the little fossil remains they have.

BABY’S VERDICT
As far as I can gather, my daughter’s limited knowledge of dinosaurs revolves around the cutesy marching song she repeatedly listens to (“…We are the dinosaurs, marching, marching. We are the dinosaurs, we make the earth flat. We stop and take a rest, over in our nest. We stop and take a rest at the end of the day….”) and from toys. From her point of view, dinos are pretty mild animals who like to roar, sleep, nibble on plants, and dance around with children. This book has none of that.

Still, she seems to enjoy the fact that we have a book devoted to dinosaurs. I’ve read it to her a few times and she seems to like imitating the dinos and looking at the pictures. Since the text is very short (one sentence per spread), it keeps her attention. I do try to add commentary and/or sound effects or a participatory movement to engage her. For instance, we talk about how much bigger the Stegosaurus is than the purple Volkswagen Beetle car on one page and hold out our arms to imitate the soaring Quetzalcoatlus. Naturally, we roar for T. rex.

Even at barely two she’s able to recognize all of the picture comparisons. There’s a ship, a fire engine, a knight on a horse, etc. The only one that gave her some trouble was the man in a deep-sea-diving suit. I think she called it a fish, too, just like the ancient sea creature pictured with it (Dinichthys).

MOMMY’S VERDICT
These are real dinosaurs, not cutesy cartoonish ones. I can almost feel the steam smoking out of the nostrils of the cover’s sinister-looking T. rex illustration. His greenish, glowing eyes and sharp teeth don’t do much to console me. I was a bit worried that the realism of the illustrations in this book would upset my daughter but they haven’t. Perhaps she doesn’t grasp their ferocity yet. Next year, that may be a different story. To me, though, I get the willies when I see the Phobosuchus (“fearsome crocodile”) eyeing the Dalmatian on top of the much-smaller fire engine. The text about this reptile “swallowing animals whole” gives me chills, too.

But the portrayals are all well done. These are terrific realistic illustrations that give the dinos personality without making them human or cute. They are scary looking in many instances. Even the tiny duck-sized Compsognathus (pictured next to a family of ducks) looks ready to strike with its razor-sharp teeth. But I remember my brother being fascinated by all dinosaurs when he was around four or five and he had memorized names and details that I don’t even know now as an adult. We took him to an exhibit with moving, robotic, life-size dinosaurs and he ate up every minute of it without any fear. So maybe my adult perception of this book is unwarranted.

The information is great, too. Though the main text only has one sentence per creature, there’s some real meat to it and generally conveys several facts. For instance, for the Parasaurolophus, the text reads “This peaceful plant eater used its head as a trumpet.” This brief entry to the animal will definitely beg for more and the few additional sentences at the back of the book provides a decent explanation.

“Parasaurolophus was about 33 feet long. It had a six-foot-long crest on the top of its head. Inside the crest were hollow tubes that connected to the animal’s nostrils. This allowed Parasaurolophus to make loud honking noises by blowing through its nose.”

One quibble about this book is that technically these are not all considered dinosaurs. There’s a flying Quetzalcoatlus (a Pteradactyl type creature), an ancient crocodile-like creature called a Phobosuchus, and a swimming “terrible fish” called Dinichthys. I’m not up on the most recent dino data, but as far as I know those are not typically called “dinosaurs” by scientists. I’m not sure about the time periods in which these creatures lived, but I’m pretty sure they span several eras.

OVERALL
This is far from an end-all guide to prehistoric creatures, but it does have a nice variety of creatures and will surely please young dino aficionados. Be aware, many of these dinos are scary looking and may frighten young children.

Gigantic! How Big Were the Dinosaurs?
Written and illustrated by Patrick O’Brien
Published by Henry Holt in 1999, republished in paperback in 2002
ISBN 0-8050-6899-6
Paperback retails for $6.95 (U.S.)/$9.95 (CAN)

This has been part of msmorvay’s Fourth Annual Resurrecting the Oldies write-off.


Recommended: Yes