DINOSAURS ON KITTY ISLAND

Watch out, dinosaurs: Those kitties look innocent, but they are adorable bundles of menace.

The reptilian residents of Dinosaur Island are bored. The narrator encouragingly tells them they can make dirt forts or watch things sink in tar pits or even reassemble skeletons…but they’ve done all that! They want to play with the kitties of Kitty Island. “Dinos, that’s cuckoo pants.…Fun with those felines will end in catastrophe.” The pink and yellow and calico kitties who conquered the Dinosaur Island dinos in Kitties on Dinosaurs (2020) are ready for a reverse play date. Game No. 1? Launch the Lizards—with a geyser. After an alarming, wet flight through the air, surely the dinos have learned their lesson…but nope. Game No. 2 involves another frightening flight, this one aboard a deflating dirigible. Game No. 3? Hairball Floaty Races, which is both gross and dangerous, once the kitties attach the outboard motors to the revolting swim rings! The dinos are starting to get the idea these kittens are playing for keeps. Game No. 4 starts with jumping into a foreboding chasm…but it ends in the Tiny Baby Kitty Playroom, which teems with bevies of even smaller kitties. That has to be safe, right? You’d be surprised. Slack’s gleefully silly artwork features wide-eyed, innocent (-looking) kittens and scary (but usually terrified) dinos in bright cartoon colors. The kittens’ mouths are usually fixed in mischievous V’s, contrasting with the dinosaurs’ doleful expressions. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Sure to elicit giggles with every “RAWR!” of distress.