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CM . . . .Volume V Number 16 . . . . April 9, 1999
Shelley Tanaka's fourth title in her "I Was There Series," Graveyards
of the Dinosaurs, deals with the enduring mystery of the disappearance
of the giant reptiles who ruled our planet 70 million years ago. Previous
books in this successful series are On Board the Titanic (Winner of
the 1997 Silver Birch Award and the 1998 Information Book Award), The Buried
City of Pompeii, and Discovering the
Iceman, 1997 winner of the eighth annual Mr. Christie Book Award.
Tanaka begins her book by way of a prologue which tells the story of Roy
Chapman Andrews, an intrepid American paleontologist who, in 1922, led the
largest land expedition ever launched into the Gobi desert. Andrews was
searching for ancient human and animal remains; however, what he
discovered instead was the richest dinosaur graveyard in the world. He and
his team returned to America with skeletons, skulls, and the first
dinosaur eggs known to science, discoveries which soon changed the way the
world looked at the giant reptiles.
Using a technique of flashbacks, Tanaka weaves the stories of three
dinosaurs Oviraptor, Centrosaurus and Herrerasaurus into her text, each
story suggesting a reason for the giant reptile's extirpation. Vivid and
accurate full-colour illustrations of the dinosaurs and their lush
environment, created by Alan Barnard, Mark Hallett, John Sibbick and
Michael Skrepnick, are complemented with charts, maps, diagrams and
photographs of scientists at work. As usual, Tanaka intersperses her text
with fascinating tidbits of related information, all clearly and
succinctly captioned and carefully chosen to capture the young reader's
attention. Tanaka has included a glossary, a time line, and a double page
map featuring dinosaur finds made around the world during the last decade,
features which will be enormously helpful to young readers.
With Philip Currie of the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology as her
paleontological consultant, as well as the help of Mark Norell and Paul
Sereno of the American Museum of Natural History, Tanaka has ensured the
accuracy of all information contained in Graveyards of the
Dinosaurs. There are no definite answers to the riddle of how the
dinosaurs disappeared, but Tanaka concludes her book with an epilogue
giving some of the explanations that scientists hold today. She ends by
suggesting that we humans may have something to learn from these huge
monsters who "..thundered over the land preying on each other and eating
monstrous amounts of vegetation, yet somehow left the earth intact for 165
million years."
Although the reading level of Graveyards of the Dinosaurs is around
Grade 5, given the high level of interest in dinosaurs that children in
primary grades have, plus the exceptional visual attractiveness of the
volume, teachers and librarians may be sure that it will be popular in the
elementary grades. It is a perfect book for middle years students
interested in paleontology and curious about one of the world's great
unsolved mysteries.
Highly Recommended.
Valerie Nielsen is a recently retired teacher-librarian who lives in
Winnipeg, MB.
To comment on this
title or this review, send mail to cm@umanitoba.ca.
Copyright © the Manitoba Library Association.
Reproduction for personal use is permitted only if this copyright notice
is maintained. Any other reproduction is prohibited without
permission.
Published by
TABLE OF CONTENTS FOR THIS ISSUE - APRIL 9, 1999.
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