Bumposaurus - Softcover

Penny McKinlay began her career as a news and show business journalist on the Daily Mirror and Daily Mail, then joined TV AM as a producer. She is now head of the News Features department at Sky News. She has written Elephants Don't Do Ballet for Frances Lincoln. Britta Teckentrup studied at St Martin's School of Art. Her previous titles for Frances Lincoln are Well a Crocodile Can!, Babies like Me!, The Best Party of Them All and The Easter Party. She has recently worked on Teletubbies designs for the BBC.

PreSchool-Grade 2-The title character is a baby dinosaur who is "so nearsighted, he couldn't find his way out of his egg." He falls in a bog, crashes into friends, and mistakes his sister's tail for leaves. After he gets lost and narrowly escapes a Tyrannosaurus whom he mistakes for mother, Grandma loans the young dino some eyeglasses and Bumposaurus can see at last. With their large eyes and expressive faces, the cartoon characters are fairly appealing, and the text, peppered with occasional alliteration, reads well enough aloud. The hero's problem sets up several humorous situations, but the series of visual gags seems forced. When Bumposaurus mistakes a tree for his father and nearly walks into hot lava, he seems dumb or unobservant, rather than merely nearsighted. He returns home "covered in bumps," but since he only hit his head on a tree once, it's not clear how he got them. Grandma's eyeglasses indicate that vision problems are part of this dinosaur world, so why did no one consider that they might apply to the child. The story is clearly lighthearted, but stretching its basic internal logic weakens the humor. Janet Morgan Stoeke's "Minerva Louise" books (Dutton) use funny mistakes more effectively, Amy Hest's Baby Duck and the Bad Eyeglasses (Candlewick, 1996) treats the glasses theme better, and there are plenty of more enjoyable dinosaur picture books available.
Steven Engelfried, Beaverton City Library, OR
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