Review by Booklist Review
There is a lot of crossover between dinosaur fans and dump truck fans, and this book ought to please the whole mess. Twenty-three different kinds of dinosaurs (identified in the opening endpapers) operate 15 different pieces of equipment (identified in the closing endpapers) at a busy construction site. T. rex, naturally, is the foreman, his belly encircled with a tool belt, overseeing a bunch of hardhatted, safety-vested dinos. This rhyming book is an alphabet book, too, though rather softly so each page's stanza is rife with the proper sequential letter: Digging, driving, drilling, filling. / Dinos tough and rough and willing. / Dump trucks dumping left, then right. / This dino might use dynamite! Santoro's collages of cartoon illustrations and photo elements are gleefully calamitous, adding to the jackhammer noise level. There's also, you know, a message about having pride in hard work. Laser-focused at a hungry, and sure-to-be-pleased, demographic.--Fletcher, Connie Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Dinosaurs and heavy-duty vehicles share the spotlight in this alphabetical tour of a construction site, but unlike Chris Gall's Dinotrux, this story casts the dinosaurs as a busy team of workers using the backhoes and bulldozers. Moving through the alphabet, Evans (coauthor of the Jellybeans series) and Brown (Professor Aesop's The Crow and the Pitcher) present a lively four-line rhyme that plays up each letter: "Hard hats, tool belts, heavy boots;/ Hammers hanging from their loops./ Heave and hoist! Hydraulic muscle!/ Heavy metal, high-wire hustle!" Just as the authors pack their verse with alliteration, Santoro (Grandpappy Snippy Snappies) jams each mixed-media spread with outsize comedic moments and enough details to delight construction-loving readers. Photographic elements (boulders, crates, rubble) mix with Santoro's glossy cartoon dinosaurs, who wear hard hats, orange vests, and pants that occasionally sink too low in the rear. More than 20 dinos appear throughout (Santoro labels both the creatures and the vehicles on the endpapers, using a banana and steak to distinguish herbivores and carnivores). Like their crew of dinosaurs, this team gets the job done. Ages 3-7. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
PreS-Gr 1-This picture book combines favorite topics of the preschool set (trucks, dinosaurs) with ABCs, alliteration, a graphic collage of action-packed images, winning cartoon faces, humor, and an assortment of searchable items. Following endpapers that introduce 24 dinosaur friends (meat eaters noted with a steak icon and vegetarians with a banana), the text launches into rhyming couplets in an alphabetic pattern; the dinosaurs are building a masterpiece of construction. Oh, they're loud and boisterous, but dedicated to their task. The tale may be a bit contrived, yet readers will be looking at the frenetic display of detailed images on each spread. While the "experts use their elbow grease to engineer a masterpiece," children are invited to find specific items-4 cups of coffee, 43 ripe bananas, an unwrapped red lollipop-or review dinosaurs on a "high-wire hustle," all a part of the romp that results in a finished playground. The clutter here is sometimes overwhelming, but an amazing wealth of detail will keep readers occupied for hours. From a surprised, helmeted compsognathus chomping on his sandwich to 15 favorite construction tools on the final pages, this is a combination of visual entertainment and text with a multitude of uses in most libraries.-Mary Elam, Learning Media Services, Plano ISD, TX (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
