How Big Were Dinosaurs? - Hardcover

Judge, Lita

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1596437197 ISBN 13: 9781596437197

Publisher: Roaring Brook Press, 2013

Synopsis

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to take a Velociraptor for a walk, or try to brush a Tyrannosaur's teeth? We think of dinosaurs as colossal giants, but how big were they REALLY?
With kid-friendly text and seriously silly illustrations, this fact-filled book puts dinosaurs next to modern animals so that you can see exactly how they size up. And a huge fold-out chart compares the dinos to each other, from the tiniest Microraptor to Argentinosaurus, the largest animal to ever walk the land.
An NPR Best Book of 2013

About this title

About the Author

Lita Judge is the author and illustrator of several award-winning picture books for young readers, including How Big Were Dinosaurs?, Bird Talk, Born in the Wild, Flight School, and Red Sled. After a summer spent reading the handwritten journals of Mary Shelley, Lita embarked on a five year journey to tell the story of this courageous teenager in Mary’s Monster. She lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire, with her husband, two cats and a parrot.

Reviews

Gr 1-3-From a cowering Microraptor, who "would barely be able to look a chicken in the eye," to an Argentinosaurus towering over a squirming pile of surprised-looking elephants (17, all told), Judge poses 12 prehistoric creatures with modern people or animals in compelling support of the observation that dinos came in a great range of sizes. In her lively, engaging watercolors, the extinct exemplars also display great ranges of colors and patterns in their feathers or scales, plus distinct dispositions: a quartet of shy Leaellynasaura, for instance, anxiously tries to blend in among a flock of same-sized emperor penguins, while Ankylosaurus, plainly in a bad mood, scowls as it batters whole cars out of its way with its clubbed tail. Along with identification for each dinosaur, the author adds brief but memorable verbal comparisons (Torosaurus "had a 10-foot skull and horns that grew as tall as a first grader"). She closes with a rousing double gatefold group portrait and leads to further print and web resources. Outstanding company for Steve Jenkins's Prehistoric Actual Size (Houghton Harcourt, 2005), with even more sizable storytime potential.-John Peters, Children's Literature Consultant, New York Cityα(c) Copyright 2013. Library Journal. LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Lots of little kids love dinosaurs. They are mythic in proportion and detail, with the added allure of having been real. Judge (Bird Talk, 2012) seems never to have grown out of this fascination, and in her latest, she applies her masterful technique to her favorite extinct animals. Creatures like Velociraptor and Argentinosaurus are drawn side-by-side with living species, contextualizing their scale. Meanwhile, delightfully silly interactions among the creatures enliven the fun. Judge’s always noteworthy artwork is spectacular: the delicately mottled watercolors admirably depict musculature and texture, while the posture and expressions of the animals could not be more full of life and personality if they had been drawn from living specimens. Libraries that already own a copy of Steve Jenkins’ Prehistoric Actual Size (2005) may be reluctant to purchase another book about the size of dinosaurs, but the two complement each other—while Prehistoric Actual Size gives the reader a close-up view, How Big Were Dinosaurs? pulls back to show the entire animal in context. Super stuff about super creatures, large and small. Grades K-2. --Paula Willey

Edition details

• Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1596437197
• ISBN 13: 9781596437197
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Judge Lita
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 40