Grade 3-6. Imagine a reunion that occurs only every 10,000 years, and the alumni that show up are all ghosts of prehistoric animals. T. rex mingles with the woolly mammoth; saber tooth and dodo reminisce; the ghosts of herbivores and carnivores yuck it up now that the hunt for food is a thing of the past. It's a fun time, until the dodo insinuates that all is not well on Earth, and then provides a tour of the contemporary world. The animal spirits shudder at the mess made by the "tall chimps" (humans) and the environmental catastrophes they have created. Though some people are fighting to save the planet, the book ends with the animals returning to the void undecided about Earth's future. Aronson wallows in cliches and uses sloppy anthropomorphizing. Often the animals seem to have been given a voice simply to mouth the author's beliefs. The brown-and-white line drawings match the amateurish level of the writing and add little to the story. Skip this one.?Cathryn A. Camper, Minneapolis Public Library
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Product Description
The place is earth, the time is now, Meganeura, Sabertoothed Tiger, Wooly Mammoth, Tyrannosaurus Rex, and a colorful cast of dinosaurs, prehistoric mammals, and other extinct creatures have returned to earth for a ten-thousand year reunion. The old home planet looks pretty good to them-no comets crashing into earth, Ice Ages, or erupting volcanoes-until the Dodo, "an extinct bird with an attitude problem," bets Sabertoothed Tiger that by the end of the reunion they will all agree that their living relatives are in danger and that life on Earth is in more trouble than ever before. Lining up on both sides of the argument-each one confident that their side will win the bet-the spirits embark on a captivating and often hilarious journey to their old haunts to spy on present-day animals of the air, sea, and land. Offering a message of hope as well as solid lessons on evolution, ecology, endangerment, extinction, and the importance of keystone species, Aronson skillfully employs a facts-in-fiction approach to make readers of all ages aware of the delicate indterdependency of all living things.
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