Gus, the Dinosaur Bus by Julia Liu

Gus, the Dinosaur Bus by Julia Liu, illustrated by Bei Lynn

Rating: 4 stars

Two of my three young kids ride the bus to and from school.  It's exciting stuff: walking up those big, huge steps, past the sweet driver Mrs. G, walking down the aisle with your mostly empty backpack bumping on the seats...

But I'm pretty sure they'd trade in their yellow school bus for a brachiosaurus any day of the week.

Gus, the dinosaur bus, takes kids to and from one particular school in this (I'm guessing?) fictional town. There's no need to walk to the curb--he just puts his head up to your window and you can slide down his neck to the general seating area on his back.  Wheeeee!

There are difficulties, of course.  His feet leave giant potholes, his tail gets tangled in wires, and crossing bridges is risky business when you weigh as much as five elephants!

And so, Gus gets retired. (He cries so hard at the news that he creates a cool new pool in the gymnasium.)  The school has to keep him around--the kids love him too much to part with him--so they make him part of the playground. He IS the playground, actually... (that last page is very similar to Superworm, a hilarious book you really should know about).

But life is not perfect for a dinosaur bus.

The illustrations by Bei Lynn are simple, unique--like well planned out scribbles.  It's a nice change of pace from the norm: books with sweeping, impossibly perfect illustrations that draw in the reader but also intimidate budding artists.

In all, a fun book to add to your pile.  My kids could not get enough of the story and pictures!

Camp Rex by Molly Idle

Camp Rex by Molly Idle

Rating: 4 stars

Hurry, check out this book to get in the mood for your summer camping trip!

If you close your eyes and just listen to the words of the book, you'll hear an old time-y, 1950s guide to camping. I just can hear the enthusiastic, wholesome male voice ring loud and clear:

Searching for an outing to enjoy with your friends?  Consider camping! The fresh air and exercise are invigorating!
Remember to stay together as a group…and stick to the trail. When you reach the campsite, find the perfect place to pitch your tent.

The words in this picture book are straightforward.  The illustrations?  Funny, quirky, endearing, and downright beautiful.  I just can't get enough of them!

Set to the wholesome, no-nonsense voiceover, a girl, her brother, and their pre-historic pals head out on a camping trip. Their time starts innocently enough as they march smilingly through the woods to a campsite. Their tents go up--with a few mishaps--and wave cheerily to a crabby owl as they move out to explore the area.

This is where the story picks up.

A traditional sing-along and marshmallow roast
always bring campers closer together.

They nearly step into poison ivy, and as the narrator urges them not to disturb the natural landscape, T-Rex (with a teensy-tiny boy scout hat perched atop his gigantic noggin), he picks up a beehive. Hilarious panic ensues as they run and jump into a lake.  They head back to camp to start a fire, cook dinner, and roast marshmallows.  T-Rex tries to be helpful by ripping up an entire tree to add to the fire, but instead he uses it to roast marshmallows: the entire root system of the tree has a marshmallow balanced on it.

This is a very cute book with incredibly sweet and warm illustrations.  Really, I'd like the pages of this book to be prints that I could frame and hang around my kids' rooms. I guess I shouldn't expect less from Molly Idle, the author and illustrator of Caldecott honor book Flora and the Flamingo last year.

The Dinosaurs Night Before Christmas by Anne Muecke

The Dinosaurs Night Before Christmas by Anne Muecke, illustrated by Nathan Hale

Rating: 5 stars

On the night before Christmas, "[t]he fossils were standing where they always stood / Looking out o'er a now fast asleep neighborhood." Across the street, a small boy looked over at the museum and wished the dinosaurs good night as he turns off his night light.

Then a band of young duckbills, all dressed up in holly,
Invited the boy, with a gesture quite jolly,
To stand upon their heads and reach out way far
And top their tall tree with a bright Christmas star!

Then, to his surprise, the fossils start to sway.  And move.  And come to life!  He is surprised to see that "the dinosaurs' bodies were growing anew-- / Sprouting rainbows of colorful feathers and scales / From the tops of their heads to the tips of their tails!" He jumps out of bed and runs across the street, happy to find the museum unlocked (!!).  He wonders if the dinosaurs will be hungry after being asleep and without food for so long...and find a meaty boy like himself delicious...when a dinosaur comes up behind him and...kisses him!  Because he's standing under mistletoe, of course.

"With a pat on the back and a cup of eggnog, / The boy helped the kind dinosaurs light their yule long. / And together they joyfully danced 'round the fire / Singing holiday songs in melodious choir."  The icing on this magical cake of a night is the appearance of Santa-sauras, pulled by eight dino-deer.

The next morning, the dinosaurs have turned back to fossils, though a sprig of mistletoe in the T-Rex's dinky hand hints at the mischief that was had.

Landing safe in his bed on soft pillows of down,
The boy waved as Santasaur flew over the town.

This is a must-buy for any dino-lover, for sure.  The story and the rhyme alone are fantastic and cute and magical, but the illustrations!  Man, the illustrations are top-notch.  Nathan Hale does a fantastic job of creating dinosaurs that are simultaneously real and sweet--no easy feat.  The book was published five years ago, but...as great as ever.  I doubt any copies have turned into fossils yet!

Dino-Baseball by Lisa Wheeler

 Dino-Baseball by Lisa Wheeler, illustrated by Barry Gott

Rating: 4.5 stars

Of all the baseball books we have in the house right now (14 at the last count), this is Ben's favorite.  Lisa Wheeler was smart to match two things that young boys really love--dinosaurs and baseball--and create a rhyme that captures the excitement of a nail-biter of a baseball game.

The Green Sox and the Rib-Eye Reds battle it out on the baseball diamond, their reptilian bodies funnily shoved into uniforms usually reserved for human players.  Barry Gott does a great job with the illustrations; I especially love how he catches the frustration and excitement (depending which team you're rooting for) of an out.  The illustrations can be a confusing jumble, especially if the gigantic brachiosaurus is involved and spread out on two pages instead of one.  We're never quite sure of his position because he spills out onto the whole field...!

I also like how Wheeler throws in some real aspects of baseball that have been fun to explain to Ben.  On the top of my list is the emphasis on good manners and sportsmanship, or ELSE:

The Green Sox manager's irate,
throws his hat and kicks home plate.
He calls the ump a nasty name
and gets ejected from the game.

Yup, without any warnings!  That's real life for you, I told Ben.  Good manners or you can't play!  Other little things include fun baseball slang and traditions--"good-bye ball" for home run, the seventh-inning stretch hot dog run...things like that.

I've read this book twice daily for the past three days, and it is going into Ben's baseball-themed backpack to share with his class after I click "Publish" on this blog post, so...it's a hit!

Puff the Magic Dragon by Peter Yarrow and Lenny Lipton

 Puff the Magic Dragon by Peter Yarrow and Lenny Lipton, illustrated by Eric Puybaret

Rating: 4 stars

"You bought our kids a stoner book?!" my husband said when he saw this book.

"It has such a sad ending!" my mother said when I told her I bought it.

This book sure has a bad reputation!  I guess that's exactly why I hadn't even thought to read it to Lorelei or Ben.  Until, that is, my cousin Stephanie suggested that I put it on my mother's shelf for all her grandkids to read.  I thought it was worth checking out.  So I did.  Literally.

I got the big book from the library, a book full of fantasy-filled illustrations, done by the talented Eric Puybaret.  The book was big--an oversized hardback--but the pictures on the pages made the book seem even bigger.  I won't quit my (unpaid) day job to sing, but I admit I can carry a tune just fine.  My kids like to hear me sing, so they were spellbound when I sang the book to them, and turned the pages of this beautiful book as the verses floated around them.

The song made the book a different experience for them, and Lorelei has been humming the tune a lot, looking for the book to fill in the blanks when she forgets the words.  ("I don't want to sing it like you do, Mommy: 'Little Jackie Paper, something something something..."  She is so right.  I always forget the words to songs!)

Puff, the magic dragon, / lived by the sea,
And frolicked in the autumn mist / in a land called Honalee.

I don't really get why this children's book is linked to some illegal substance, but my mom is right--this book definitely does have a sad twist.  After Puff and Jackie Paper frolic and imagine and play in a way only a child and his imaginary friend can, Jackie Paper grows up.  He goes away, never to return again, and Puff is lonely.

But illustrator Eric Puybaret saves the day and keeps Grammy's tears at bay.  In the last two pages, he paints in a young girl who clearly replaces the turned-into-a-muggle Jackie.  Puff is happy again with his new playmate, new adventures, new cycle of childhood.

I think that Steph is right, this is a great addition to your shelf, especially if you can carry a tune and can sing it to your children.  Pick up the board book version at your local Wegmans while grocery shopping, just like I did yesterday.

Dinosaurumpus! by Tony Mitton

Dinosaurumpus! by Tony Mitton, illustrated by Guy Parker-Rees

Rating: 5 stars

I give up.  I think I'm going to hand over my blog to my friend Beth, whose book recommendations are out of this world.  Maybe just maybe she'd like to add some of her own posts...with her critic Julia at her side...?!

This book is The Best Dinosaur Book we've read.  Hand's down!  Every time we read it one or both of the kids are bobbing their heads and tapping their feet (or fork, which I try not to encourage!) and we end up turning whatever floor is nearby in a dance floor.  This is a shake-your-bootie book with an awesome rhythm and a "chorus" that Lorelei knew by heart after a few reads:

"Shake, shake, shudder / near the sludgy old swamp. / Everybody's doing / the dinosaur romp!"

Mitton introduces a few dinosaurs--the old faithfuls, triceratops and T-rex and stegosaurus--and throws in some new ones just to make me stop and wonder how the heck to pronounce them: deinosuchus, apotosaurus, deinonychuses (not a typo--it's different from the first one on this hard-to-say list).  But really the best thing about the book is the beat, not the main characters (though dancing like dinosaurs is pretty fun, so Mitton was pretty smart...I mean, sometimes we like to dance gracefully like flamingos, but stomping around like crazy is the best!).

Oh--and the book is illustrated by the same guy who illustrated Giraffes Can't Dance, which is one of our family's favorite books ever.  The dinosaurs all have huge grins on their faces and are really bustin' a move on their dusty dance floor.

My favorite part about this book, though, is the end.  I'm just a sucker for sleepy beasts, and this book ends with all the dinosaurs getting tuckered out and falling asleep in one big reptile heap.  I love my kids like crazy, but I really like them asleep, too.

I know my nieces are going to LOVE this one.  I'm so excited to read it with them!

How to Raise a Dinosaur by Natasha Wing

How to Raise a Dinosaur by Natasha Wing, illustrated by Pablo Bernasconi

Rating: 3.5 stars

I am pretty confident that my nieces will like this one!  This new book is funny and unique, with slightly messy illustrations to match a slightly silly idea: a dinosaur as a pet?!  The idea so preposterous and crazy and fun that, for imaginative little kids, they are sure to be taking care of their (hopefully) imaginary dinosaurs within an hour of reading this book.

What makes the book just a little extra fun and extra different is the lift-the-flaps pages.  Not just ordinary lifting of flaps, but a tiny book within a book and other little surprises that Lorelei loved finding and opening when reading this (carefully, because it's a birthday book) with Grammy the day it arrived in the mail.

I'm not sure if this is a book that is fun to read after two or three dozen reads...would the flaps maybe get old or, like in our house, ripped off and um, eaten?  There's not a huge point to the story--not that all great books require one--and once the idea of having a dinosaur as a pet wears thin, it might gather a bit of dust. We'll experiment on my nieces and see how long this book engages them!

Stomp, Dinosaurs, Stomp! by Margaret Mayo

Stomp, Dinosaurs, Stomp! by Margaret Mayo

Rating: 3 stars

We love Margaret Mayo's books--we check out one or more every other time we go to the library.  I just realized that I have only reviewed one-- Roar! --so I'll get on the ball and tell you about the others we've enjoyed soon.  In honor of my twin nieces' birthday month, the dinosaur book reviews continue...to Mayo's latest book.  This one isn't her best; the rhymes just seem to be a little more forced, to trip a bit instead of roll right along.

That said, Alex Ayliffe's illustrations are so toddler-friendly that the text could be an English teacher's nightmare and the book would still be worth checking out.  I like how the dinosaurs are torn-paper-versions of realistic dinosaurs.  The brightly colored dinosaurs and their prey (never other dinosaurs, though they do fight/wrestle with each other) just jump out at you, which is great for this read-aloud stage.

This is a good vocabulary book, too.  Words Lorelei learned include: gulp, whack (good as long as it's not your little brother getting whacked...and not in a Sopranos sense!), charge (not in the credit card sense), head-but, chomp, mash (helpful when we made mashed potatoes last night), guard, trap.  Not bad, and a nice change from Lorelei's favorite-of-the-moment books, the Fancy Nancy and Pinkalicious series.  It's good to have a brother, I think!

Dinosaurs Galore by Giles Andreae

Dinosaurs Galore by Giles Andreae, illustrated by David Wojtowycz

Rating: 3.5 stars

Our twin nieces are, as Lorelei puts it, "crazy about dinosaurs" right now.  I mean, completely obsessed.  We've lent them all the books we have on dinosaurs and we bought them new dinosaur books for Christmas.  And for their birthday in two weeks?  You guessed it: dinosaur books.  This is one of them.  I like it, though I don't love it.  (I already got the ones I love for them: Danny and the Dinosaur and When Dinosaurs Came with Everything).

We really like Giles Andreae--he seems to produce solid B books, with an occasional knock-out like Giraffes Can't Dance, which is one of our favorite books to give as a gift.  This dinosaur book has an opening and closing, and in between each dinosaur gets to say his own little rhyme to describe himself to the reader.  It's got a pretty good rhythm and, in case your little one is like our nieces, it's not too annoying to read twice a day.  (I hope my sister agrees!)  The pictures are bright and just scary enough (which is to say, not too scary), and there's a little pink dinosaur to find on every page.

A good addition for the dinosaur obsessed kiddo!

Danny and the Dinosaur by Syd Hoff

Danny and the Dinosaur by Syd Hoff

Rating: 5 stars

Of course we love Danny and the Dinosaur!  Who can resist the charm of visiting a museum and finding a dinosaur that can wake up after 50 gazillion years to play with you and your friends?  Not us!

Here are some noteworthy things about this noteworthy book: 

1.  No parents are in the pictures; just kids.  What a great reminder that childhood should really involve time just with children, not only time supervised by adults.

2.  Danny really wants the dinosaur to come home and live with him forever, but the dinosaur simply explains that the museum needs him.  I love this little homage to one of my favorite things at playgrounds: the short little friendships that emerge just in a game of chase or follow the leader, where names aren't even bother to be exchanged. 

3.  During a game of hide-and-seek, the dinosaur can't find a place to hide where the kids can't find him (no surprise there).  So they "make believe they can't find him" and let him win.  That's Ben's favorite page by far, when the text reads, "Where oh where is that dinosaur?" and so on, and the huge dinosaur is hiding behind a tiny light post.  This is exactly how my kids play hide-and-seek!  I explained to Lorelei how the kids were making the dinosaur feel better by pretending they couldn't find him.  (Oh please let at least a few of these lessons in empathy stick!)

4.  It's actually pretty long!  But because the illustrations are so captivating and funny, even Ben can sit through this book pretty easily, and he's got plenty of ants in his pants.

This is worth buying, but only buy a great hard cover version, or maybe even the library binding, because it'll be on your shelf for a long time.  And then on your children's shelves for their kids.  Imagine that!

When Dinosaurs Came with Everything by Elise Broach

When Dinosaurs Came with Everything by Elise Broach, illustrated by David Small

Rating: 5 dino-mite stars

This is such a fun book.  Our neighbor got it for Ben, for Lorelei's birthday.  You know you've got a great friend when both of your kids get a gift on one of their birthdays.

The gist of the book is simple:  One day a little boy and his mother go out for their "boring" route of errands and...WAIT.  I have to stop here and tell all children's book authors to stop saying that errands are boring.  Let's call them riveting and fun and exciting, as we pretend they are in our house!

Anyway, at each stop, they get a dinosaur with their purchase.  At the doughnut shop, then leave with a triceratops.  At the doctor, a stegosaurus.  At the barber, a pterosaur.  And on the way home, the little boy can't help but feed a baby hadrosaur that runs alongside his car some doughnuts, so that "little" guy follows the car home, too.

His mother is, understandably, fairly distraught at the thought of keeping four dinosaurs.  But then, crafty as all moms are, she figures out ways for them to help with the household chores.  So, they stay.

The fantastic illustrations of David Small deserve a round of applause, too.  Small makes the dinosaurs giant--check out the image on the right.  The triceratops, and the other dinosaurs, practically leap out on to your lap!  What talent!  The way that he contrasts the exasperated mothers and the delighted kids as mother-kid combos tote around their new dinosaurs is really funny.

I have to say that I feel an affinity towards Elise Broach.  Maybe because she is super educated and started writing children's books when her youngest (of three) kids was a year old.  She points out on her website that she started writing books when she was in grade school, and her "parents, teachers, and school librarians showered me with totally unjustified encouragement, saying they knew my books would be on their shelves one day."  Just goes to show you what some quality, surely justified encouragement can do to child.

I'm Bad! by Kate and Jim McMullan

I'm Bad! by Kate and Jim McMullan

Rating: 3.5 stars

Yesterday as I was cleaning up the kitchen, I watched as a hawk swooped down in front of me to a spot where an unlucky chipmunk must have been peeking its head innocently out from under a bush.  This huge hawk kind of squatted, with his talons on something, and rolled its neck around as if looking for someone to which he could gloat.  I was captivated but wanted Lorelei, who was coloring on the other side of the kitchen, to see.  So I grabbed her, hoping not to break the spell, and showed her.  Just as we dashed back to the window, the hawk took off in front of us, and we watched him powerfully flap through an opening into our woods.

Crazy!  Lorelei was impressed, but I couldn't contain my excitement.  "Did you see that?  Did you see that?  WOW!"  I kept saying.  I explained to Lorelei that he was looking for lunch and, I guessed, he found some.

If your kids don't realize that cute chipmunks are lunch for someone else, then maybe you should hold off on this book.  Because this big, bad Tyrannosaurus Rex is just looking for lunch.  His prey keeps foiling him again and again until he finds his mother, a bigger and badder Tyrannosaurus Rex.  She gives him "take out," which is a small dinosaur that she places at his feet.  He feasts on it (that part is actually not seen--you read "Gobble, snarf, yum, gobble" and I think it's pretty obvious to even kids what is going on) and then curls up with the bone on the next page, declaring "I love my mommy."

At what point do we teach kids about the life cycle?  I think the answer is when we must, whenever that is in your respective family.  For us, it begins a little earlier because our dogs have already turned up with prizes of their own--a chipmunk here, a baby raccoon there, a toad or a newt.  They are always hunting something.  So, for us, this book was pretty entertaining, as all of Kate and Jim McMullan's books are.  But, if you'd rather wait to teach that everything is someone else's lunch, maybe don't check this one out!

How Do Dinosaurs Say I Love You? by Jane Yolen

How Do Dinosaurs Say I Love You? by Jane Yolen, illustrated by Mark Teague

Rating: 2 stars

We are pretty crazy about dinosaurs in this house right now.  From my perch here at the computer, I can see five books of our very own and I know there are three more from the library in the library stack in the playroom.  After reading a dozen or more dinosaur books, I am a little confused about the role that they should take in kids books.  Should they be soft and cuddly like the triceratops in The Littlest Dinosaur, funny as can be like those in Dinos on the Go, cute but still pretty fierce like Dinosaurs Galore, fun playthings that sometimes come alive as pets like in Sammy and the Dinosaurs, or...pretty scary and huge and not-so-nice like in How Do Dinosaurs Say I Love You?

As you can see from my low rating, I don't think that Jane Yolen quite got it right this time.  This series of books is so popular--and this book in particular--that I am left scratching my head.  In this book, dinosaurs do a bunch of not-so-nice things like slap their parents hands, throw sand, mope through nap time, flood the house, and a bunch of other things that I'd prefer not Lorelei and Ben visualize.  Then, the parents forgive the dinosaurs when they blow kisses, or clean up, or hold their hand.  I am lucky to have kids who don't do all of those things (yet?!) and while of course I'd love them as they did all those things, I surely don't want to encourage it.

So I'm perplexed on this one.  Help!  Are they favorites in your house?  If so, what do you like about them (or what do your kids like about them)?  I just don't understand why every list I've ever found (practically) recommends this book!

The Littlest Dinosaur by Michael Foreman

The Littlest Dinosaur by Michael Foreman

Rating: 3.5 stars

Who knew that dinosaurs could be born as preemies?  I had no idea till I read this book. 

The eponymous (that's the biggest word I'll use all week) littlest dinosaur is littler than everyone else, and is sad about it.  He goes to a big hill to make himself feels big, and often sees the biggest dinosaur on a neighboring hill, looking as sad as the littlest dinosaur feels.  One day the littlest dinosaur's family gets caught in the mud and the littlest dinosaur rescues them, despite his small size, with the help of the biggest dinosaur, who finally feels useful despite his large size.

It's cute and the littlest dinosaur is pretty lovable.  I'm not jumping up and down, but this is a fun addition to a large stack of dinosaur books that have been piling up around our house during the past few trips to the library.  It's definitely one to buy or check out a dozen times or more if you've got a little one who is, well, the littlest kid in his playgroup/class.  We first read The Littlest Dinosaur's Big Adventure, by the way, which was also in the same category...cute, worth checking out and worth reading a few times.

Sammy and the Dinosaurs by Ian Whybrow

Sammy and the Dinosaurs by Ian Whybrow, illustrated by Adrian Reynolds

Rating: 4 stars

Sometimes, a book just grows on you. Unlike adult books, where you carve out the time to read a book once and maybe just maybe you read it another time a decade or two later, you read children's books again and again and again in the course of a week. Sometimes in the course of a day. Once, while a Peace Corps Volunteer in Thailand, I walked out from seeing a movie, paid for a second ticket for the same movie, and walked right back in to watch it again. It was that good. Or maybe it was just because the air conditioning felt so good? Or that the men on the screen looked like me, but weighed more than me? Hmmm...this is a tangent I should end. Anyway, my point is that good children's books are read hundreds times more than adult books, and sometimes the good-ness of a book doesn't reveal itself until its third or fourth (or tenth or twentieth) reading.

Take Sammy and the Dinosaurs. At first, I wasn't so impressed. I found the title on a list so ordered it up from the library. It's about a little boy who finds a bunch of old dinosaurs in his grandma's attic. He washes them, patches them up, and then carries them around in a big bucket. They do everything with him, until he forgets them on a train. He's sad, but Grandma takes him to the lost and found where he names them all individually, which impresses the Lost and Found man: "They are definitely your dinosaurs. Definitely."

I really like how the dinosaurs are Sammy's dinosaurs, and he takes his role as caretaker very seriously. Other than the noted exception of forgetting them on the train, they are inseparable. And he obviously misses them wholeheartedly when they are gone. The dinosaurs obviously are alive to him, which is evident in the cute illustrations and also in how, just twice, the dinosaurs whisper things to him.

It was always cute, but it wasn't until the third or fourth reading that I was hooked. Reading this book aloud helped me love it. It was really fun to whisper like the dinosaurs do in Ben's ear--which, of course, made Lorelei lean into me, waiting for her turn for Mommy to come close and whisper in her ear. It made Lorelei and Ben pay attention all the more. And then, at the end when Sammy reclaims his pets-oops-I-mean-toys, he closes his eyes and yells, "Come back my Stegosaurus! Come back my Brontosaurus!" to all of them. Ben especially gets a kick how I, too, closed my eyes and yell the same way.

Hmmm. Maybe, in Lorelei and Ben's eyes, this book is just okay but they give ME five stars for reading it...well, I'd like to hope that's true. I might go buy this book so I can read it to them in their teenage years. Maybe it'll still hold their attention then?

Around the time we started reading this book (thanks to our local library), we went shopping for new Spring pajamas. Lorelei chose mermaid ones and Ben chose, you guessed it, dinosaurs. My husband overheard me reading this book to our kids and decided that they needed more dinosaur stuff. Now. Lots of it. So on its way to us are three more books (why didn't we preview them at the library?!) and a huge trunk--little buckets are just for little imaginary Sammys--full of dinosaurs. So maybe the dinosaur obsession will happen a little earlier for our kids.

Dinos on the Go by Karma Wilson

Dinos on the Go by Karma Wilson, illustrated by Laura Rader

Lorelei's Rating: 3.5 stars

I was trying to write a bit this afternoon at a little table at our rented beach house. I asked my husband to watch the kids. He happily accepted, situating himself a room away from me, with a bunch of toys around him. On the table next to my computer was a stack of books. Within five minutes Lorelei was sitting across from me and Ben was sitting next to me, each with a book in their hands. It was cute, but I did want to get a little writing done, so I told Lorelei that she had to read to herself. She said okay, but then, after looking at each page for awhile asked me politely, "Mommy, which dinosaur is this?" or "Mommy, what is this word?" or "Mommy, will you read just this one part to me?" Clever girl.

I'm not a huge dinosaur person, but they are definitely a rite of passage for children, I think. I am sure I went through an interest in dinosaurs when I was a child--Mom, as my one faithful follower, is this true? I didn't expect Lorelei to be interested in them, and before her third birthday! Her decision to read Dinos on the Go today was helped by my husband's decision to turn on the cartoons earlier, just to see if there was anything good for her. There happened to be some dinosaur cartoon and she thought it was cute. So, now she can identify her T. Rex and Triceratops and Barosaurus. These are the dinos that Wilson chooses to include in her cute book, which I like but there are others of hers that I'm much crazier about.

This is a poem, which of course always makes me happy, and it is cleverly written and even more cleverly illustrated. What I like best about Wilson's writing and Rader's pictures are the things that they stick in for the older readers, parents included. For example, the sign on one truck is "Herb Ivore and Sons, Expert Gardening." Or the whole gist of the book--dinos are on the go because they're going to be extinct! Lorelei doesn't get that just yet, or the little jokes, but she does like how the barosaurus rides her bike (with a helmet--gotta love that nod to safety first) and the T. Rex barely fits on the sleeping berths on the train.

In all, a good book. But not one that we'll likely be checking out again and again from our library.