Customer Reviews

Oh, Say Can You Say Di-no-saur? (Cat in the Hat's Learning Library)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I bought this book for my three year old and was delighted to find that it is a book that will also grow with my son. He loves the ryhmes and the illusrations. The book holds his attention while also teaching him.

Let's put it this way, my 4 year old can now accurately pronounce the names of the dinosaurs and knows a fair amount about them. This book is wonderful. If your child is into dinosaurs this is the one book that you should get. It even gives a list of other dinosaur books that you can turn to for further reference. I'd have given it 6 stars or more.

My son who will soon be five years old, loves this book. We read it three times in a row when I first purchased it and we have read it many times since. It's clever and fun and informational, too. A great addition for the dinosaur book collector.

This is going to be mostly a review of the whole series, with a few remarks about this particular book.

"The Cat in the Hat makes science fun and interesting!"--that's the thinking behind the whole "Cat in the Hat's Learning Library," I guess. It sounded great to me when I first came across these books. And yet it doesn't quite work. The books are maybe worth getting, but they aren't very good.

There are two big (related) problems with all of these books. Maybe the biggest is that the writing is not very good. They lamely ape the Dr. Seuss style, but they never come with even the same ballpark in terms of the creativity of the language. It seems as if the writers are scientists who had never written a poem before--a lot of the rhymes are painfully bad.

The second problem is that the spirit of Dr. Seuss generally and the Cat in the Hat particularly are missing from these books. It's as if Dr. Seuss books were written by committee--that's just so wrong! I cringe at the beginnings of these books where the Cat declares he's going to take the kids on what turns out to be a perfectly vanilla tour of some domain of knowledge, and that "your mother will not mind at all if you do." Thing 1 and Thing 2 are altogether too well-behaved. Look, if you didn't like creative, adventurous, naughty spirit of The Cat in the Hat, people, you should have chosen some other character to use to teach stuff.

Some might complain that the adventurous Cat is pressed into wholly didactic service. That doesn't bother me. I and my boy like to learn and to be taught, especially in an entertaining or interesting way (we much preferred the Magic School Bus book about dinosaurs--which, by the way, was a lot more informative). In fact, that's why these books earn three stars instead of something less. They do succeed in teaching a fair bit.

This book is one of a number of books that have a Dr. Seuss rhyme to them but that teach some aspect of nature or the world. This one goes into Dynasaurs, others are on the human body, insects and other animals. Whereas the rhymes don't always work it does keep a childs attention and they can't help but learn something.

Where the original Seuss was magically rhythmic, these is sloppy and forced. I appreciate them trying to meld most young boy's (and probably a fair percentage of girls) favorite things, but it comes across as a good idea really poorly executed. I don't think that we were expecting the clever playfulness with words that Dr. Seuss is known for, but a bit more of an attempt would have been nice.

My 3 year old is definitely a dino fan. This book is full of Seuss-like fun AND dinos. It's a great addition to out library.

Read this book if you want to truly appreciate the brilliance of Theodore Geisel, because that is what is missing (somewhat grotesquely) here.

The rhymes are forced and unimaginative. The meters are crude and regularly just don't work. The "whimsy" is unappealing, to say the least. The drawings are serviceable, but reduce Seuss's images to blank types without much imagination. (And just who is using military imagery -- a pop-gun tank -- in a post-Butter-Battle world?)

I give it two stars just because my kids enjoy reading about dinosaurs, though I steer them back to the real Seuss (which they do genuinely enjoy more -- albeit maybe because I enjoy them more) whenever possible.

my daughter had picked this book out in wal-mart but i got a much better price on here. she loves hearing me try to say these dinosaur names & giggles if i mess up. it is a fun book to read & is very funny when read aloud by an adult. great for help remembering those pesky names too!

Please don't pass up buying this book! It's wonderful! We bought it for a 2 year old and he loves to have anyone read it to him. He loves the rhyming words and we like that he learns about dinasaurs...and to love to read!