Nibbles: The Dinosaur Guide

Nibbles, the tiny, yellow book-eating monster is up to his old tricks. While the story’s narrator is trying to tell the audience about dinosaurs, Nibbles chews a hole through a page of the dinosaur book. Belonging to the “bookivore” species, known for book munching and “making mischief in other people’s books”, Nibbles dares the dinosaurs to try to catch him, and the chase is on. First, he nibbles through the pages about triceratops, but the triceratops are no match for the swift and elusive Nibbles. From there, he chomps through pages about diplodocus in which he outeats the huge dinosaurs. Then, surrounded by hungry velociraptors, Nibbles escapes once again, only to find himself in the toothy mouth of a tyrannosaurus rex. As luck would have it, the tyrannosaurus does not like the taste of Nibbles, and so he spits him right out of the book and into the night sky.

Young children will enjoy the interactive aspect of this book – flaps that lift or lower to reveal more information or action – as well as the antics of Nibbles, who, though a monster, is actually quite cute and not scary at all. But the story has no real plot, merely a chase through a dinosaur book, complete with die-cut “bite” holes where Nibbles chomps through the pages, and, with the exception of his naughtiness, Nibbles displays no character traits, thus making him not particularly relatable nor even likeable. Since the story is so focused on the chase, readers will not even notice that there is little content. The book’s title is particularly misleading as the dinosaur “guide” aspect of it is lacking. There are only four dinosaurs presented, and the information about each one is quite limited.

In Nibbles: The Dinosaur Guide, there is some narrative, but it’s mostly delivered through cartoons with speech bubbles. Children might find the “potty humour” funny, such as diplodocus’s strong flatulence sending an unwary Nibbles flying through the air, or the fact that the triceratops had a big bum or that the diplodocus made a 10-foot-wide poo puddle, but this is unnecessary and takes up space that could have been put to better use, especially on the dinosaur fact pages, limited as they are.

The illustrations, fun and cartoonlike, are rendered mainly in golds, greens, rusts and browns, and the overall light quality is brighter than that of the first book in the series. One concern is that the flaps will not stand up to repeated use with multiple borrowers in a public library setting.

Though Nibbles: The Dinosaur Guide is more enjoyable than the first book, Nibbles: The Book Monster, it’s still more of the same – a chase through a book.