8 December 2020 WE LOVE DINOSAURS (Board Book) by Lucy Volpin, Nosy Crow, June 2018, 32p., ISBN: 978-1-5362-1443-7
“If I had a dinosaur, just think what we could do
He could lift me off the floor and take me to the zoo
And if I had a dinosaur, just think what we could see
We could look inside the clouds above my balcony
And if I had a dinosaur, just think where we could go
All the way to Grandma’s house to play her piano.”
-- Raffi (1977)
I can vividly recall my first visit to the dinosaurs at the American Museum of Natural History. It's been close to sixty years since that field trip, but I can still see myself gazing up at the glorious immensity of those skeletons.
“We love ones with gigantic ROARS!
And ones with tiny, snuffly snores.
We love their spines from head to tail.
We love the spikes they swing and flail.”
Reading to children, even before they are speaking in sentences, promotes language development. And if you’re going to spend your time reading aloud, it’s a lot more fun to perform books to babies and toddlers when you have a rollicking, rhyming book. A book full of enormous, colorful, smiling creatures to catch the eye of your baby audience. WE LOVE DINOSAURS is a perfect example.
This very fun read concludes with,
“In fact, we really love them all! We’d only love them more, we think…
if somehow they weren’t all extinct.”
I really like how the book ends with that science term, “extinct,” offering a perfect opportunity to introduce the concepts of evolution and life cycles. And scientific research and museums. With little ones, you can explain that the dinosaurs lived long ago. You can share online images to complement the pair of skeletons that accompany the ending.
Since that first memorable trip to the museum, I’ve loved imagining dinosaurs wandering the planet. WE LOVE DINOSAURS will captivate the newest generation of dinosaur aficionados with catchy rhymes and large, colorful images.
Richie Partington, MLIS
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