HOW TO CARE FOR YOUR T-REX

“When you take good care of your T-Rex, your T-Rex will take good care of you.”

Elaborating on a notion that has been popular since Bernard Most’s If the Dinosaurs Came Back (1978), Baker offers general guidance on how to keep a dino-pet (or many other sorts) fed, clean, and well-behaved. He mixes this with observations on how a huge, toothy theropod can be an awesome teammate in various sports and drools enough to create a terrific water slide, but it is definitely a messy eater (Coverly displays a fine gift for depicting goo and slop in showing what it does to a stack of pancakes and sausage pizzas) and, considering those short arms, maybe not so good at getting a kite out of a tree. In loosely drawn cartoon scenes the illustrator tucks an inconspicuously diverse cast of small human figures—the children excited, the grown-ups mildly dismayed—around a humongous green Tyrannosaurus rex that happily trashes a suburban neighborhood before it’s time to brush, floss, climb into dino-jammies, hear a bedtime story, and snuggle down into bed to a sweet lullaby from its blond, light-skinned young caretaker. Dino-dumps aren’t the only topic left unaddressed, as this lively riff on a popular trope focuses more on the pleasures of having an outsized pet than its challenges.

A playful if incomplete twist on an ever popular theme.