Dinotopia: First Flight
Grade 3-6-Brightly colored, exquisitely detailed prehistoric creatures brimming with personality square off against menacing-looking mechanical monsters in this luxuriantly illustrated-but lamely plotted-prequel to Dinotopia: A Land Apart from Time (Turner, 1992; o.p.) and its spin-offs. Having replaced all of its animals with massive, iron-gray robots, the Empire of Poseidos mounts an attack on Highnest, home of Dinotopia's pterosaurs. Luckily, young Poseidonian orphan Gideon Altaire, along with (taking a cue from the Disney bible) a gaggle of cute, squabbling nonhuman sidekicks, arrives to save the day. Children will be drawn to the flashy, dramatic paintings, but are likely to skip the text-especially since isolated lines printed in larger, differently colored type serve as captions to each scene. A fold-out game board with perforated sheets of character and action cards makes this problematic for libraries, even without the trite story line. Alan Dean Foster's full-length "Dinotopia" novels (HarperCollins) have more to offer.John Peters, New York Public LibraryCopyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.