From Publishers Weekly
A menagerie of fanciful beasts springs from the imagination of the young artist who narrates this slim collection of verses: "My dinosaurs/ walk from my brush/ and live,/ they do what my/ moving hand/ tells them to do,/ they are paint/ on paper./ I love them." The premise is promising and the lineup engaging, with such creatures as the Smellasaurus, Messysaurus and Shoppersaurus ("The dinosaur mall/ Is his main habitat") lurking on the pages. But both Greenfield and Gilchrist (previously paired for Night on Neighborhood Street) turn in uneven performances. A number of Greenfield's verses display a nimble, Prelutsky-like wit--the jaunty Babysaurus, for instance, is "his mama's little baby,/ Smiling sweet in Tennessee,/ But his middle's in Montana,/ And his tail's in Waikiki")--while other entries are awkward ("He fell when he tried to do a handstand,/ He fell when he walked a beam,/ But he was the greatest at landing on top/ Of his gymnastics team"). Gilchrist's fans will find only a few of her usual warm, realistic watercolor portraits (namely, of the child speaker); most of the illustrations are rendered in colored markers, in a flat, cartoonlike style, as if drawn by the narrator himself. Unfortunately, the result is not so much childlike as contrived--the compositions lack spontaneity. Ultimately, this is neither the author's nor the artist's best effort. Ages 4-up.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From School Library Journal
Kindergarten-Grade 3-An inviting glimpse at one child's creative process. In the first poem, the young narrator talks about how her head is too small to hold all of the dinosaurs that she imagines, "so I become my artist self/and set them free." The realistic-looking illustration shows the youngster, her cornrowed hair tied up in jaunty pigtails, leaning over an empty piece of paper surrounded by paints and brushes. Meanwhile, abstract creatures swarm around her like half-formed ideas. The pages that follow contain a mix of poems supposedly authored by the little girl about fanciful dinosaurs and other selections about how she imagines, paints, and creates these amusing beasts. "Florasaurus" likes to graze on flowers, "Shoppersaurus" runs through the mall buying this and that, and "Singersaurus" has a beautiful voice but is too shy to perform in front of an audience. All of the dinosaur poems are illustrated with artwork rendered in black pen, watercolors, and color markers that looks as though it could have been produced by a talented child. In the other selections, Greenfield uses simple language to express the girl's feelings of enthusiasm, self-confidence, and joy as she puts her brush to the paper. A fine choice for art classes, creative-writing groups, and children who love dinosaurs in any form.
Joy Fleishhacker, formerly at School Library Journal Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
