RAWR!

Fronted by a padded cloth dinosaur, a whiny monologue on being big that will likely go begging for an audience.

“Being a dinosaur is hard,” the narrator—depicted in the very simple cartoons as a towering, popeyed, green theropod—begins. Why? Everyone else is shorter, furniture is too small, and roaring, toothy giants have a scary reputation. Really though, “I am careful. / I am helpful. // I have good table manners.” Hugeness can be a plus in sports or on the playground, too. Besides, knowing that “RAAWWRRR!” just means “Hello” in Dinosaur, no one should ever be afraid to meet one. Right? Toddlers drawn to the strokable cover and the style of art aren’t likely to be body-conscious enough to absorb the reassuring message, and school-age children of all sizes will be put off by the volume’s babyish look. Also, though the dino’s big teeth are somewhat rounded off rather than pointy, its efforts to seem inoffensive don’t come off as all that convincing—particularly to readers who have met, say, the foxes who are so “helpful” to Chicken Little and the Gingerbread Boy or Jon Klassen’s deadpan predators.

Heavily earnest and as mushy of approach as it is of cover.