DINOTHESAURUS

Dinothesaurus

Written and illustrated by: Douglas Florian

Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing, 2009

56 pages

Poetry Book

            I choose to read this book of poems because of its clever title. The book contains several different prehistoric poems about all kinds of different dinosaurs such as T-Rex, Triceratops, and Spinosaurus. For each dinosaur poem, the author includes characteristics and facts about its titled dinosaur. Some of the poems even compare and contrast the different types of prehistoric creatures. Therefore, not only are the poems cute and funny, but they are also informational as well. The book even contains a “Glossaryaurus” in the back of the book to help readers with their comprehension of the story and to further their knowledge about dinosaurs.

            For the illustrations, Florial used brown paper bags as his canvas which gives the pages a slightly aged look. Florian also used gouache, collage, colored pencils, stencils, dinosaur dust, and rubber stamps to make his illustrations complement each poem. The text in the book is informally placed around the illustrations.

            Dinothesaurus has not won any official awards, but it has been nominated for several. However, the book of poems is defiantly fit for the classroom. I would use this book in classrooms for integrative lessons for students in grades first and up. For history I would pull the prehistoric facts about dinosaurs from the story while introducing vocabulary. For science I would use the poems to talk about dinosaur characteristic will having the students learn about poetry.  Lastly, for older age groups, I would use the poems as a start for prehistoric research.