Dinothesaurus: Prehistoric Poems and Paintings

Dinothesaurus: Prehistoric Poems and Paintings

Written & illustrated by: Douglas Florian

Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2009

56 pages

Picture Book – Poetry

I chose this book because I love dinosaurs and I’ve never seen a book that mixed dinosaurs with poetry. I was interested to see what this book was about. This book has several small poems about different types of dinosaurs. This book is full of facts about dinosaurs spoken in poetic language. The poems are light and easy to read and understand.

The author and illustrator of this book, Douglas Florian, uses collage as his medium. The illustrations are abstract and he uses watercolors within the collages. He also uses what looks like crayons. Some of the dinosaurs look real, but others look very abstract and strange. The abstract art keeps the book lighthearted and fun.

This book is appropriate for grades 1-5. I would read this book to introduce a science lesson about dinosaurs to a 5^th grade class. These poems give specific names and facts about dinosaurs. The 5^th graders would really enjoy the illustrations in this book. I would use the poem, “Barosaurus” for a 4^th grade math lesson. The poem talks about the dimensions (in feet) of the Barosaurus. The teacher could teach the students how to scale down the size then measure out how big the dinosaur would be. The students could draw and color the dinosaur. The poem, “The Age of Dinosaurs” would be a great poem to read to 5^th grade students as well. This could be read to prompt 5^th grade students to do creative writing. This poem talks about how dinosaurs are only in museums now and how they slowly died off. I would prompt my students with, “What do you think happened to the dinosaurs? Why do we only see them in museums and movies?”