Does a Dinosaur Wail?
Written: Apr 06 '05
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Art. Concept.
Cons: There’s no room for cons.
The Bottom Line: My little dinosaurs adore it.
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| panguitch's Full Review: Jane Yolen - How Do Dinosaurs Get Well Soon? |
Long before The Land Before Time set all of our kids to stomping around the house like sharp-tooths, dinosaurs ruled the earth. In those lost eons I was myself a child and I wanted to be a paleontologist. My career development plan consisted of trips to Dinosaur National Monument in Vernal, Utah, and earnest study of my picture-book library, where triceratops battled tyrannosaurus rex eternally.
It’s unanimous, kids love monsters. And dinosaurs are as real as monsters get, especially when the concept of extinction still hovers beyond the horizon. Would my kids be any more surprised to see an ankylosaurus at the zoo than they are to see an aardvark?
What’s more, as any parent knows, kids are monsters. It’s no surprise a familial bond is manifest between the terrible lizards and the terrible twos. While we may spend our energies domesticating these creatures, we also adore their precocious, ferocious appetite for life. It’s no stretch for us to imagine our children with scales, tales, teeth and claws. Not yet needing to bother with any "imagination" switch inside their heads, our children take it for granted they are dinosaurs. Of course the image is very cute.
Jane Yolen and Mark Teague amplify the cuteness in their book How Do Dinosaurs Get Well Soon? by putting dinosaurs in the sick bed. Dilophosaurus sneezes. Parasaurolophus spills her medicine. Brachiosaurus throws up. Styracosaurus whines and digs in his heels on the way to the doctor. Their parents are frustrated and worried. It’s a much different story for the good dinosaurs. They take their medicine, get lots of rest, and behave at the doctor’s. Of course, they’re the very same dinosaurs.
And that’s a large part of why kids like this book and it’s more famous cousin, How Do Dinosaurs Say Good Night? Kids see themselves in both the good and bad dinosaurs. They know the difference, laugh at the naughty dinosaurs, and appreciate the affirmation of proper behavior. I think it’s also somewhat gratifying for them to see themselves portrayed as giant monsters. (And somewhat vindicating for parents.) Of course, a velociraptor isn’t quite as fearsome with a runny nose. Unless you’re a tissue. Which is appropriate, since kids don’t really want to be monsters, and aren’t, really, for that matter. The point here is that the image of styracosaurus, towering over his mother as he sits on his little bed wrapped in a bathrobe, cuddling his teddy and a box of hankies, the horns surrounding his head softened by the thermometer in his mouth, is amusing for kids and cute for parents.
Yolen’s language is utterly simple. Most pages have under a dozen words. The dinosaurs’ names are entirely optional, appearing unobtrusively in the art instead of the narrative. Teague’s drawings are where the concept really succeeds. His colorful dinosaurs emote like children. They grimace, they fling their arms melodramatically. And their bedrooms are messy. Still, they’re recognizable for any budding fossil-digger. What my wife and I like best are the adults—how daunted they are. Their concerned, aggravated, relieved faces. The doctor’s expression as she stands on a ladder with a tongue depressor and tries to get carnotaurus to open wide.
The paste downs and flyleafs (the insides of the covers) are filled with dino-portraits. If they made wallpaper with this pattern I’d be busily pasting it on my kids’ walls. They love this book and so do I. If you can only have one, shoot for the first book, How Do Dinosaurs Say Good Night? But How Do Dinosaurs Get Well Soon? is just as flawless.
– Panguitch
Recommended:
Yes
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"Realism is quite incapable of describing the complexity of contemporary experience." -Ursula K. Le Guin
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