T. Rex (Read and Wonder) - Hardcover

Vivian French lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, and has written dozens of books, including GROWING FROGS, also illustrated by Alison Bartlett. "I've always loved dinosaurs," she says, "and the fact that we know so little about them fascinates me. In my lifetime the experts have changed their minds many times over. Maybe T. rex will turn out to be a dragon!"

Alison Bartlett lives in Bath, England, with her son, Joel. Together they search for dinosaur fossils but have yet to find one.

PreS-Gr. 2. In a sprightly picture book that's as much about the mysteries of science as it is about dinosaurs, a boy and his grandfather visit a natural history museum's T. rex exhibition. The imagined life cycle of the much obsessed over carnosaur is explained in a friendly, rhythmic conversation between boy and grandpa: "It began with an egg!" / "What size was the egg?" / "The egg was as big as your head . . . maybe." Variations on the following question-and-answer refrain echo throughout the book: "And how did he grow? Or don't you know" / "It was millions and millions of years ago!" More dinosaur speculation abounds in captions that curl around the lively pages. Bartlett's endearing, color-saturated paintings of the museum's T. rex dioramas reflect and enhance the author's playful, vivacious approach to scientific exploration. Budding paleontologists will be inspired by all the detective work that remains to be tackled in the perennially popular world of dinosaurs. Karin Snelson
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