The Dinosaurs' Night Before Christmas
The traditional Christmas poem gets a wild and woolly new treatment in this wonderfully illustrated book, sure to attract dinosaur fans. A young boy is asleep, but “there arose such a clatter,” so to speak, from the museum across the street that he heads over to see what’s up. What’s up is the dinosaurs, starting to wake from their millions-of-years’ sleep. Bones turn into scales and feathers, and soon the huge reptiles are on the move. For a moment the boy wonders if an approaching dino wants to eat him, but there’s a bit of mistletoe hanging around that leads to a kiss instead of a chomp. The text mostly keeps to the rhythm and scan of the original, though it goes on much longer and occasionally takes a rhyming roundabout. It’s the acrylic artwork that’s the standout here. The well-crafted dinosaurs, in eye-popping colors, really do seem as if they’ve come to life, and their ferocity is neatly combined with their jollity. Included is a CD with dinosaur-themed Christmas songs (lyrics appear at the end of the book) as well as the story read aloud by The Today Show’s Al Roker. Preschool-Grade 2. --Ilene Cooper