Magic Color Skeleton: Amazing Dinosaur Discovery

PreS.-Gr. 3 These two interactive picture books from the Magic Skeleton series offer stories of museum visits as a way of introducing different animals and their skeletons. In Amazing Dinosaur, Tom and his father visit the Dinosaur Museum. As they view the skeletons, the boy consults his scrapbook, which contains facts and pictures of different species. The main text carries a narrative account of the trip to the museum, enlivened by cartoon balloons carrying the comments of museum visitors, including Tom. Pages from Tom's scrapbook provide a highly accessible source of information about the dinosaurs under discussion: apatosaurus, stegosaurus, tyrannosaurus rex, corythosaurus, and triceratops. Similarly, Incredible Animal begins with three children and their parents visiting a museum exhibit of animal skeletons. While her brothers and parents comment on the displays, Sally frequently opens her animal-information scrapbook, which provides interesting factoids about the animals they see in skeletal form: whale, snake, eagle, crocodile, and elephant. In both books, the cartoon-style ink drawings, washed with bright colors, are enhanced by the addition of a pull-tab feature on the outside edge of the right-hand pages. The center of the page features a clear plastic sheet bearing an ink drawing of a skeleton on display. When the child pulls the tab, the picture of the skeleton slides outward. Beneath the transparent drawing of bones emerges a painting of the dinosaur as it might have appeared in life, complete with a background scene. This clever (and relatively sturdy) sliding-picture feature seems like magic, adding a playful element to the books' appeal. Carolyn Phelan
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