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Summary
Summary
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
Author Notes
When Lita Judge was fifteen, she wrote to the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology in Alberta, Canada, and asked to volunteer on a dinosaur dig. She spent the next three summers digging up dinosaur bones, studying fossils, and expanding her imagination. Since then, Lita has continued to learn about the incredible diversity of the dinosaurs that used to roam the earth and brought many of them back to life in Born to Be Giants: How Baby Dinosaurs Grew to Rule the World . She is also the author/illustrator of Bird Talk .
Reviews (6)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Judge (Born to Be Giants) revisits familiar territory with this lighthearted but factual look at dinosaur size. Moving from smallest to largest, her illustrations juxtapose 12 dinos with modern-day objects and animals for comparison. A close-up of a fierce microraptor is followed by a scene showing the same microraptor cowering in the presence of a crowing rooster. Slightly anthropomorphized facial expressions increase the cuteness factor of the realistically rendered creatures, and humorous comparison scenarios abound: a struthiomimus is shown in the lead at a horse race, and a woman with a broom tries to keep a tsintaosaurus from devouring her garden. The concise narrative jauntily moves through the tongue-twisting dinosaur names and their dimensions ("Even velociraptor, a dinosaur that fills our imagination with its flesh-ripping claws and powerful jaws, was only the size of a dog"). Concluding notes explain how fossils are formed and how scientists use them to figure out dinosaur size. The notes open into a four-page gatefold showing all of the prehistoric and modern creatures alongside each other, giving readers a feel for their relative size. Ages 6-9. Agent: Linda Pratt, Wernick & Pratt. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
Dinosaurs, like many other animals, came in a range of shapes and sizes. Judge helps us understand the variations in size by creatively placing dinosaurs not in a typical re-creation of a Mesozoic landscape but instead in juxtaposition with modern-day animals and objects familiar to young readers. Both illustrations (in pencil and watercolor wash) and descriptions draw on the familiar: Protoceratops sidles up to a baby rhinoceros, Ankylosaurus menaces an SUV, and the horns of a Torosaurus are "as tall as a first grader." Although it's usually jarring for purists to see humans and dinosaurs (and these with very human expressions) sharing the same space, it is clear throughout the book that this is for comparative analysis only. Indeed, the dinosaurs' expressions invite readers to share in their amusement, curiosity, and sometimes fear when dropped next to creatures from our time. A foldout section at the end of the book contains a to-scale illustration of all the dinosaurs together. danielle j. ford (c) Copyright 2014. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
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.--Willey, Paula Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
Stomp! Chomp! Watch out, here comes Dinah , an irrepressible baby dinosaur who starts life doing the kinds of things big, aggressive reptiles do. But a chance sighting of two much smaller, fluffier creatures exchanging a kiss sets Dinah on a new mission. Her attempts to do something that isn't in her nature make for silly fun that's likely to set preschoolers chomping and stomping around the room and maybe exchanging a few kisses of their own. CHICK-O-SAURUS REX By Lenore Jennewein; illustrated by Daniel Jennewein 32 pp. Simon & Schuster. $16.99. (Picture book; ages 4 to 8) Snobbish farmyard bullies won't let Little Chick play in their treehouse ; his family isn't up to scratch . "If your father isn't brave and mighty, you'll never be either." But Chick digs deeper into his past and unearths some very big - T. rex! - bones . Treehouse acceptance ensured , he shows his own mettle while also remembering the rights of other little creatures . Daniel Jennewein's bold outlines and expressive animals make this simple story, with its interesting DNA fact , into an entertaining, good-hearted romp. GUS, THE DINOSAUR BUS By Julia Liu Illustrated by Bei Lynn 32 pp. Houghton Mifflin. $12.99. (Picture book; ages 4 to 8) Getting to school in the morning would be a lot more fun if it meant sliding out your window onto the back of a friendly green dinosaur . Though other picture books have imagined the narrative possibilities of living with oversize animals, Gus , a sweet-faced herbivore who's happy to help out, is an especially charming addition to the genre. When the Gus bus runs into trouble , kids from school help him find an occupation that's an even better fit . HOW BIG WERE DINOSAURS? Written and illustrated by Lita Judge 40 pp. Roaring Brook Press. $17.99. (Picture book; ages 6 to 9) Judge knows about dinosaurs; she started going on digs at the age of 15 , and published "Born to Be Giants: How Baby Dinosaurs Grew to Rule the World" in 2010 . Here she compares dinosaurs with animals (and S.U.V.'s ) on earth today. The result is an amusing visual mismatch; a boy clings for dear life to the neck of a galloping Struthiomimus while racehorses struggle to keep up ; three cows pause in their grazing to peer worriedly at a Stegosaurus (who weighs as much as they do, combined ). DINOSAUROLOGY The Search for a Lost World By Raleigh Rimes Illustrated. 30 pp. Candlewick Press. $19.99. (Novelty book; ages 8 to 12) The large-format books in the "Ology" series, with their thick, embossed covers and scrapbooklike pages with envelopes of coded messages and tiny artifacts, are just the thing for rainy weekends and late-night flashlight reading. "Dinosaurology," supposedly the account of a 1907 "expedition into the unknown," is packed with detailed illustrations, mini-biographies of real and imagined paleontologists and a through-narrative about an island where dinosaurs still roam . Be warned: may cause a severe outbreak of dinophilia among middle-grade readers. SARAH HARRISON SMITH ONLINE A slide show of this week's illustrated books at nytimes.com/books.
School Library Journal Review
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 City (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
The title question is answered engagingly with comparisons of a handful of dinosaurs to objects and animals children will readily recognize. Velociraptor, spreading terror in audiences since the first Jurassic Park movie, was only the size of a dog, though still pretty vicious. Stegosaurus was as heavy as three cows, but the plates on its back made it look much bigger. Argentinosaurus was the length of four school buses, but at least it was a vegetarianit ate trees. Images of these dinos next to children, adults and common objects (note the SUV crushed by Ankylosaurus) on white backgrounds are not only amusing, but give a real sense of scale. All the people, animals and dinosaurs that populate these pages appear again, to scale, in a wonderful double foldout. Colors are clean and clear, outlines are crisp. Judge also describes how she figured out the relative sizes of the dinosaurs by studying fossils and skeletons at various museums, and she offers a very brief book and website bibliography. Perhaps a favorite might be Tsintaosaurus, which had a spike "like a giant unicorn" growing out of its head. Dino-philes, assemble! (Informational picture book. 7-10)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.