Byron Barton is the creator of many picture books for young children, including My Car, Building a House, and Little Red Hen.
Barton's economical book does not scrimp on details or ebullient hues. In colors straight out of a crayon box he provides children with a genuine ``first'' dinosaur book. The endpapers provide a vivid glossary of dinosaurs, with names and phonetic pronunciations underneath each picture. And then the sweet text: ``A long time ago there were dinosaurs. There were dinosaurs with horns and dinosaurs with spikes . . . . There were fierce dinosaurs and scared dinosaurs.'' That particular line is illustrated with a black cloudy sky and jagged yellow lightning; the simple expressions of fear on the dinosaurs' faces will reassure readers that even these mightiest of creatures could have been afraid of the same things children are. Ages 3-6. (Mar.)
PreS-Gr 1-- Barton's radiant pallette of Play-Doh colors is perfect for dinosaurs. His illustrations capture the plasticity and vividness of children's own artwork, without patronizing or making fun of his young audience. More than Gibbons' Dinosaurs (Holiday, 1987) or Aliki's My Visit to the Dinosaurs (Crowell, 1985), Barton conveys the primordial sense of excitement that draws children to these beasts. Despite the illustrations' simplicity, Barton's dinosaurs' expressions are not mammalian smiles; they have a saurian quality all their own. The endpapers identify the creatures by scientific name and pronunciation. Barton wisely keeps his text simple, describing dinosaurs only by size and physical features (``There were dinosaurs with sails on their backs, and dinosaurs with hard bony heads''), letting his drawings portray who owned which horns, teeth, tail, and spikes. This superb introduction for the very young shares the excitement of dinosaurs with its audience, without tangling their attention spans in boring details.-- Cathryn A. Camper, Minneapolis Public Library
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