How Do Dinosaurs Stay Friends?
By Jane Yolen. Illustrated by Mark Teague. Blue Sky Press/Scholastic. $16.99.
What if You Had Animal Ears!?
By Sandra Markle. Illustrated by Howard McWilliam. Scholastic. $4.99.
Fly Guy Presents: Snakes. By
Tedd Arnold. Scholastic. $3.99.
There is educational as well
as amusement value to blending the characteristics of animals and humans, and
Jane Yolen and Mark Teague have been taking advantage of that fact for more
than 15 years in their How Do Dinosaurs…
books. The latest entry, 10th in the series, is entirely typical
and, as usual, entirely enjoyable. The issue this timer is conflict: it is
inevitable even among friends, Yolen says, so what is important is not avoiding
it but knowing what to do about it to keep the friendship alive. Of course, she
does not make that comment in those words – that would be too preachy and too
talky. Instead, How Do Dinosaurs Stay
Friends? follows the usual narrative arc of these books, with Yolen asking
whether friends do such-and-such that is clearly wrong – for example, tearing
up a book, throwing a lunchbox into the lake, or writing nasty things on the
school blackboard. Readers of course know the answer to these questions is
always “no.” Then Yolen says what friends do
do for conflict resolution, such as apologizing, sharing, and sending a note
saying they do not want to fight. Simple messages, all, but enormously
entertaining because Teague does his usual spectacular job of showing the
feuding kids as various types of dinosaurs – drawn accurately, according to the
latest scientific research regarding shape and color, and presented with their
real scientific names the first time they are shown. A major one of the
delights of this series is seeing a nasutoceratops angrily pointing a
finger-like claw at a stamping, roaring acrocanthosaurus while four children
shown as children look on,
bewildered, at the swiftly escalating fight. A leptoceratops writing that a
dilong is stupid, an anhanguera spying on a proceratosaurus – these are amazing
visions of modern-suburban dinosaurs acting like misbehaving children having
outsize temper tantrums. And that of course is the point. The inside front and
back covers add to the delights of the book by showing the dinosaurs doing
things they never got around to doing within the story, such as riding bikes
together and flying a kite. The mixture of accuracy in the dinosaurs’ depictions
and utter ridiculousness in their expressions and interactions is completely
winning, and the chance to learn such dinosaur names as kaatedocus and
lythronax is a bonus. The formula of turning animals into people is at its best
here.
Sandra Markle and Howard
McWilliam, on the other hand, turn people into animals – partially, anyway – in
What if You Had Animal Ears!? The
notion here, as in the creators’ previous book about animal feet, is to explain
how certain aspects of animal anatomy function, then imagining what children
could do if they had the same characteristics. A Eurasian red squirrel, for
instance, has ear tufts that grow thicker and longer as the weather gets colder
– so a child with those ears “could play in the snow without earmuffs or a hat
and still have toasty, warm ears.” So says Markle – and the book offers, on the
left-hand page, photos of the squirrel that clearly show its ears, with a
McWilliam illustration on the right-hand page showing a girl with squirrel ears
happily making a snow angel. Every animal’s aural characteristics get attached
to a human here: the okapi has ears that move separately, so it can hear things
coming from two directions; thus, a child with those ears could do the same
thing, and “no one would ever be able to sneak up and surprise you.” The ears
of the Townsend’s big-eared bat magnify the tiny sounds made by the insects it
hunts, so a child with those ears – this is one of McWilliam’s best and
most-amusing drawings – could “hear mosquitoes in time to catch them or swat
them away.” The end pages of the book are the most overtly informative and
thus, unfortunately, the least interesting: they show how human ears work and explain how to keep them healthy. The
difference between this book and the Yolen/Teague one is that Yolen and Teague
integrate the lessons into the narrative, while Markle and McWilliam save them
for the end. The more-direct, more-focused educational portion of What if You Had Animal Ears!? is useful,
but because it is so straightforward, kids may just skip it. Even then, though,
they will have learned something about the special characteristics of some
animals’ ears – and perhaps their curiosity about their own will kick in at a
later time.
Tedd Arnold’s Fly Guy is not
quite a people-ish animal, or insect, but he comes close, accompanying the boy
whose name he can say (“Buzz!”) on all sorts of adventures and sometimes
dressing up in sunglasses, baseball caps and the like. In addition to their
wholly fictional adventures, Fly Guy and Buzz go on informational quests from
time to time, and in Fly Guy Presents:
Snakes they head to the zoo to learn about the legless reptiles. Using this
series’ typical mixture of reality and drawings – here, photos of snakes and
their habitats plus cartoons of Buzz and Fly Guy – the book explains that
snakes are among several types of reptiles and are ectotherms (Arnold deserves
praise for not using the inaccurate term “cold-blooded,” although it would have
been nice if he had explained why that word is wrong). The pictures of snakes
are typically fascinating, giving close-up views of a sidewinder in motion, two
snakes shedding their skin, a sea snake swimming, the heat-sensing pits that
some snakes possess, snakes swallowing their prey, and more. There are a couple
of imperfections in the presentation that would concern herpetologists but do
not mar the enjoyment of the book. One is the statement that the largest snake
alive today is the anaconda – but that is generally thought true only in terms
of its weight and girth, with the reticulated python believed to grow longer.
More significantly, although only 10% to 15% of snakes are venomous, half the
ones shown in the book are, and this may perpetuate the unfortunate
misconception that there are lots of dangerous snakes out there – a wrong
belief that leads to many, many harmless snakes being killed by ill-informed
people. Still, the overall approach of Fly
Guy Presents: Snakes is a positive one, most of the information is
presented both clearly and interestingly, and the inclusion of some correct
scientific words and their pronunciations (oviparous and viviparous, for
example) is a plus. Whatever human-like characteristics Fly Guy may have or not
have, he and Buzz make good hosts for young readers interested in a first look
at some animals that continue to be poorly understood and very much
under-appreciated by far too many human beings.
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