Dinosaur Mountain: Digging into the Jurassic Age
Starred Review. Grade 3–6—Using the same tawny palette as inDown the Colorado(Farrar, 2007), Ray has painted soft-edged backdrops for her lucid exposition of the life work of Earl Douglass, fossil-finder extraordinaire. Benefitting from the Cope/Marsh "Bone Wars" and the deep pockets of philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, Douglass embarked on a1909 expedition to the Uinta Basin (Utah) to find Carnegie's demand for "something big." What he found was BIG—a bone bed that ultimately became Dinosaur National Monument. The readable text is bracketed by large illustrations and smaller diagrams, charts, maps, and, most importantly, direct quotes from Douglass's field journals. Added for readers' edification is a cast of characters of 10 Jurassic dinosaurs found at Dinosaur Mountain, a large map of the monument (which spreads across the Utah/Colorado border), an extensive author's note, a brief bio of Douglass, and an even briefer one of Carnegie. With its sand-colored pages, the warmth of the palette, and the brown script of the journal notes, this is a vibrant window into the burgeoning world of American paleontology a century ago. A rich find.—Patricia Manning, formerly at Eastchester Public Library, NY(c) Copyright 2010.  Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc.  No redistribution permitted.