Dinosaur! [Hardcover]

Peter Sis (Author, Illustrator)

Book Description

Age Level: 3 and up

It starts in the tub, with a dinosaur bath toy. But then another dinosaur pops out of the water. And look out - here comes another - and another - and ANOTHER. Soon there is a Hall of Dinosaurs in the bathroom.

Fill the bathtub.
It could happen.
All it takes is imagination!

01 Riverbank Review Magazine's Children's Books of Distinction Award

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

PreSchool-K-A wordless picture book that takes readers on a wild adventure of the imagination. A boy and his toy dinosaur are in the tub when a larger dinosaur appears, and then another, and as the beasts loom larger, the boy and his surroundings become smaller. The culmination is a three-page spread revealing a full-color herd of dinosaurs racing across the page, and if children look very closely, they'll see a tiny boy in his tub. Then, magically, the oversized creatures disappear, and all that are left are the boy and his bath toy and his mother, who appears with a towel. This imaginative story with wonderful endpapers naming the creatures should appeal to all young dinosaur lovers. S's's barely fleshed-out, cookie-cutter cartoons tell the story. He masterfully plays with white space and perspective, conveys action, and captures a full range of emotions with the absolute minimum of line and detail. As in Fire Trucks (1998) and Trucks, Trucks, Trucks (1999, both Greenwillow), the author's bold artwork and simple plot are right on the mark for this audience.
JoAnn Jonas, Carlsbad City Library, San Diego, CA
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

As in last year's Trucks Trucks Trucks, Sis once again paints everyday adventures that are turned fantastic by a boy's imagination. In simple line drawings, the wordless story begins when a boy hops into the tub with his toy dinosaur. An ominous, blue snout slowly emerges from the bath water and mayhem breaks loose--one dinosaur turns into two, three, and more; the bathtub melts into a prehistoric pond; and the boy is suddenly in an ancient desert, with a crowd of beautifully detailed dinos thundering across a foldout spread. Detail gives way to line drawing again, and the boy stands happily in the tub, the last dino tail nearly off the left page, as an anxious mother runs with a towel to the scene. As in his earlier titles, Sis shows a pitch-perfect understanding of the blur between the real and the imagined in children's play. Endpapers printed with a guide to dinosaur species will entertain fans. Gillian Engberg

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 3 and up
  
• Hardcover: 24 pages
• Publisher: HarperCollins; 1st edition (April 5, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0688170498
• ISBN-13: 978-0688170493
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 8 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,514,551 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dinosaur fun, August 5, 2000

By 

Deanna - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dinosaur! (Hardcover)

This wordless picturebook is just right for sharing with a young dinosaur fan. It begins as a small boy heads to the tub with his toy dinosaur. Soon, "real" dinosaurs begin to creep into the pictures until they eventually spread across the pages and take over the bathroom. Only when mother comes running with a towel does the last dinosaur tail slip off the page. This is a fun book that blurs the lines between a child's imagination and reality.

2.0 out of 5 stars Too simple for the older kids/Too terrifying for the younger ones., December 24, 2009

By 

Kathryn - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dinosaur! (Hardcover)

The suggested reading level is 4-8 for this, but older kids will be bored by its simplicity, boring illustrations, and lack of words.

But if you mistakenly buy it for a younger group, they'll never take a bath again after seeing the huge, terrifying, aggressive dinosaurs that come out of the bathtub.

Unlike his book "Fire Truck" (a book which has equally dull illustrations but at least does have some merit through a counting exercise), it's less clear that the dinosaurs are a figment of the boy's imagination in this book than when the boy in the other book mutates into a fire truck. And while I like picture books that tell a story with their illustrations, there's really no story here except a boy in a tub crowded out by prehistoric beasts.

There are some great dinosaur books out there for kids who love them -- and this just isn't one of them.

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Jurassic bath, June 2, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Dinosaur! (Hardcover)

As in the three previous Matt adventures by Peter Sis, gouache paints draw out a young boy's imagination. At the same time, plain white background pages in each book anchor the child in such daily activities as playing, spacing out on the sofa while his mother vacuums, putting away his toys, and this time bathing. Again, one color is highlighted: red in FIRE TRUCK, blue in SHIP AHOY!, orange in TRUCKS TRUCKS TRUCKS, and now green in DINOSAUR.

The author/illustrator takes the hallmark sparse text of FIRE TRUCK and TRUCKS TRUCKS TRUCKS one step further. Thus, DINOSAUR, like SHIP AHOY!, is wordless. Typically, each story holds its own just by the pen and ink and watercolor art. Also, when imagination has worked itself up to its wildest, there is the characteristic reality check reeling in of Matt by his mother: by making pancakes, reading a story, taking a walk, and here providing a bedtime towel rescue from the water-splashed battle in the bathroom.

My mother quickly distinguished birds and butterflies in flight because her parents not only showed her the classic stationary poses in books but also went out on their land at the edge of her small hometown to practice identifying the abundant nature in flight and in motion. Sis likewise decorates the inside pages of the front and back covers with immobile dinosaurs and then depicts them in motion across the Matt quartet's hallmark gate-fold illustration spreading to three pages. The dinosaurs get bigger and interact more forcibly until they all trample across a desert which was probably a jungle before the Jurassic jaws and paws chomped and clomped through it. In the process, DINOSAUR clears up the confusion over similar dinosaurs by grouping the plodding Apatosaurus and upright Plateosaurus; the three-toed Compsognathus and the two-toed Deinonychus; the anteater-faced Corythosaurus and Saurolophus; the armored Europlocephalus, Stegosaurus, and Triceratops; the bigger headed Tyrannosaurus and more pinheaded Camptosaurus.

I like to think of the four Matt adventure books as prequels to the previously published KOMODO! by the same author/illustrator. The little boy who collects trucks could end up collecting dragon memorabilia. Also, with his ship imaginings, Matt could take a trip to the island of the Komodo dragon, particularly after passing through a dinosaur adventure with a dinosaur toy in his earlier years.

This latest book in the Matt quarter takes its place on the shelf with the ZOOM and RE-ZOOM perspective books by Istvan Banyai and with such other classics as TIME TO GET OUT OF THE BATH, SHIRLEY by John Burningham and WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE by Maurice Sendak. DINOSAUR helps young readers get through the terrors of the bath, as described by David F. Birchman in THE RAGGLY SCRAGGLY NO-SOAP NO-SCRUB GIRL and by Rebecca C. Jones in DOWN AT THE BOTTOM OF THE DEEP DARK SEA. Peter Sis also leads the young reader down the road to such classics as the nutcracker, the tin soldier, and the velveteen rabbit stories in which toys have their own lives. Thus, it is not only Matt but also the toy Tyrannosaurus clutched in his left hand that emerge clean enough from the bath ritual.