Triceratops Stomp

In a prehistoric forest, a clutch of big eggs is nestled among the dark ferns. Soon a brood of adorable baby triceratops peck their way out of the eggs and enjoy their first meal. T-Rex comes roaring, but Triceratops mother scares him off and the triceratops babies return to their nest for a nap.

In this simple story, fully half of the text is onomatopoeic (as can be seen in the excerpts). The large, bold font generally stays at the bottom of the double spread area or off to one side separated from the illustrations. Because hyphenation, changes to the size of the font and capitalization encourage the reader to read aloud with enthusiastic vocal variation, Triceratops Stomp is definitely a book meant for a grownup to read to a child or group of children, rather than a book for a child to practice reading alone.

The computer-generated illustrations may not be everyone's cup of tea; the dinosaurs look lively, but the foliage and landscape seem oversimplified and very flat. Most of the colors are muted shadowy browns and greens with little contrast.

Extra content includes a concluding “Can You FIND ME in the Story” page that invites readers to return to the book and locate the seven dinosaurs that appear somewhere in the book. This page also provides brief information about the dinosaur type as in “ALAMOSAURUS I WAS A PLANT-EATING GIANT WITH A VERY LONG NECK AND A TINY HEAD”. The closing endpapers carry the text “This is how BIG we were” and provides a size comparison of all the dinosaurs with a human family standing at the side.