Poetry Friday: Starred Review!

Illustration (detail) and poem Copyright 2009 Douglas Florian

Tyrannosaurus rex

Ty-ran-oh-SAW-rus REX (king of tyrant lizards)

Some 40-feet long.
Some 14-feet tall.
Its back limbs were strong.
Its front limbs were small.
Its eyesight was keen.
Its hunger voracious.
This creature was seen
In times called Cretaceous.
Its jaws were horrific.
Its profile distinct.
I find it terrific
That it’s T-rex-tinct.

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My great editor, Andrea, just told me that Dinothesaurus is getting a starred review in Publishers Weekly. Yay!

*Dinothesaurus: Prehistoric Poems and Paintings

Douglas Florian. S&S/Atheneum,$17.99(56p) ISBN 978-1-4169-7978-4

Florian’s free-flowing, witty collection of poems and collages about dinosaurs is a giganotosaurus delight—perhaps his best work ever. The poems marry facts with a poet’s eye for detail: the Brachiosaurus was “longer than a tennis court” and the Ankylosaurus says, “We like spikes and we like scutes/ (Bony plates we wear as suits).” Small experts will appreciate the “Glossarysaurus” at the end, but the heart of the book is in its humor, the spontaneity of both illustrations and poems, and Florian’s slightly askew view of the Mesozoic creatures. A Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton spews cutout images of things a T. rex might actually have eaten, along with a tumble of other things (newspaper clippings, a boot, a building), while the text ends with a great pun (“I find it terrific/ That it’s T-rex-tinct.”). The tiny (20-inch) Micropachycephalosaurus stares up at a huge display of his enormous name spelled out phonetically, in illuminated caps and as a rhombus. Art and text will encourage aspiring paleontologists and poets to parse these pages again and again. Ages 6–up. (Mar.)