ADOPTING A DINOSAUR

A girl’s quest for a pet, any pet, takes a turn when she finds a dinosaur egg in the park.

Ali is a little girl with puppy fever. And kitten fever. Really, she’d settle for just about any animal to call her own, but her parents shut her down. So of course when Ali finds the giant egg, she brings it home, and after a week of love and attention, a dinosaur hatches. Cleverly, Ali asks her parents for a dinosaur. When they indulgently tell her, “Okay, if you find one, you can adopt one,” Ali’s won. Kimo the saltasaurus is both cute and fast-growing, and the story concludes in the only way the laws of real estate allow: The dinosaur parents show up, and Kimo becomes a beloved occasional visitor. If the ending is predictable and the story familiar, this stands out in its above-and-beyond execution. The writing is snappy, especially when the dialogue is rendered in large hand-drawn letters (“WOAH, WOAH, WOOAAAHHH THAT’S A DINOSAUR!”), and the art throughout is consistently delightful. Kimo, of course, turns out to be the most adorable-est, cuddliest dino, and when he’s covered with licks by his adoring saltasaurus family while a child on a ladder pats one of the parents…let’s just say no reader will be able to resist. A Spanish-language edition, Adoptar un dinosaurio, proves just as charming. Ali and her parents present white.

Humorous without a trace of snark, this Spanish import hatches just right.