Budding biologists and others with an interest in what’s inside will be entranced.
Multilayered overlapping cutouts provide an unusually detailed 3-D look at T. Rex’s innards—or at least what can be deduced about them from the fossil record.
Visible through a big acetate window on the front cover, the cutouts peel back with each turn of a sturdy page—highlighting, for instance, realistically depicted arm and leg bones, major muscle groups, or reconstructions of pulmonary and other systems. Notes around the central die cut, embellished with painted illustrations, cautiously explain what researchers know or believe from modern survivals or related fossils about each bit or system. Young dinomanes get not only a vivid anatomy lesson from this, but also a clear notion of how profoundly paleontology is based on educated guesswork: “By studying modern animals with this body structure, such as giraffes…we can guess how T. rex’s body adapted….” Other entries in the Inside Out series present similar deconstructions of a (particular) Egyptian Mummy, a (generic) Human Body, and Sharks, with a melodramatically posed great white as exemplar. Models, most of them children, in side illustrations for Human Body are diverse in age and race.
Budding biologists and others with an interest in what’s inside will be entranced. (Informational novelty. 6-9)Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-7603-5533-6
Page Count: 16
Publisher: becker&mayer! kids
Review Posted Online: Nov. 13, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2018
A winning, and necessary, update to Kathleen Zoehfeld’s Terrible Tyrannosaurs (2001, illustrated by Lucia Washburn).
Tyrannosaurus rex poses with 10 recently discovered relatives in this toothy portrait gallery.
Speaking as “Dr. Steve,” co-author Brusatte—paleontologist and tyrannosaur lover—explains to young dinomanes how the titular tyranno (formally dubbed Qianzhousaurus, nicknamed for its long nose) was unearthed and reconstructed before going on to introduce nine other 21st-century discoveries. Each comes with a general description, a “fact file” of basic statistics, a collective timeline that neatly groups contemporaries, and a realistically posed and rendered individual portrait in a natural setting. Following a simple but effective activity involving chalk, a tape measure, and a very large expanse of concrete, an equally cogent infographic at the end illustrates size extremes in this prehistoric clan by juxtaposing images of a human child, a like-sized Kileskus, a full size T. Rex, and a (slightly smaller) school bus. The dinos display a wide range of coloration and skin and feather patterns as well as distinctive crests or other physical features, but Dr. Steve, who is white, is the only individualized human figure until a closing album of snapshot photos.
A winning, and necessary, update to Kathleen Zoehfeld’s Terrible Tyrannosaurs (2001, illustrated by Lucia Washburn). (pronunciation guide, glossary, museum list) (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-249093-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 25, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2017
Another “humerus” study in comparative anatomy.
A comparison of select human and dinosaur bones connects readers with some of our more ancient predecessors.
Continuing the approach of Bone by Bone (2013) and Tooth by Tooth (2016), Levine points up parallels between fossilized skulls, ribs, toes, and other skeletal features and those of modern readers as well as prehistoric frills, horns, and the like that we don’t happen to sport. Some of this she presents as easy posers: what sort of dino would you be if you both had a long neck and “your vertebrae didn’t stop at your rear end but kept going and going and going?” Diplodocus, perhaps, or, she properly notes on the ensuing double gatefold, another type of sauropod. What if you had two finger bones per hand rather than five? T. Rex! If your pinky bone grew tremendously long? A pterosaur! Just for fun, in the simple but anatomically careful illustrations, Spookytooth temporarily alters members of a cast of, mostly, brown-skinned young museumgoers (two wearing hijabs) to reflect the exaggerated lengths, sizes, or other adaptations certain bones underwent in dinosaurs and several other types of extinct reptiles. Generous lists of websites and other information sources follow a revelation (that won’t come as a surprise to confirmed dino fans) that birds are dinosaurs too.
Another “humerus” study in comparative anatomy. (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: April 3, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4677-9489-3
Page Count: 38
Publisher: Millbrook/Lerner
Review Posted Online: Jan. 21, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
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