Boy, Were We Wrong About Dinosaurs! - Softcover

Kathleen Kudlinksi the award-winning author of more than forty books for children, including  the Boy, Were We Wrong series. She lives in Connecticut and Vermont.

*Starred Review* K-Gr. 3. What could be more heartening to children than the unabashed admission that grown-ups make mistakes? Science has had its share of theories once accepted as fact but later superseded, and the mystery of dinosaur fossils seems to have brought out the imaginative side of scientists. Beginning with the ancient Chinese, who decided that dinosaur fossils came from dragons that still lived, the story fast-forwards to nineteenth-century scientists, who guessed that Iguanodon's sharp, conical bone was a spike on its head, rather than a spur on its hand. One mistaken idea after another is examined and illustrated with an ink drawing juxtaposed against a single-color background. Further information comes to light, and the information is corrected on a page showing a dinosaur drawing tinted with full-color washes. Intelligently designed and imaginatively conceived, the artwork makes the text more understandable and the whole book more beautiful. It also reflects the outlook of the text, portraying the scientists of each generation as earnest, sometimes puzzled searchers who did the best they could with the evidence available. The ending returns to the Chinese beliefs, stating that if birds are the descendants of dinosaurs, then they still live. Best of all, the closing paragraph acknowledges that the search is not over yet: the children fascinated by this book may one day find new answers to old questions about the dinosaurs. Carolyn Phelan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved