Reviews: A Boy Wants a Dinosaur

This review first appeared in The New York Times Book Review, May 19, 1991.

   Though children are widely considered to be untidy creatures, in actual fact it's their parents who have messed up the planet, and children -- those experts on adult error -- seem to understand this. Perhaps because their bad habits are shorter-lived and less entrenched, children are born ecologists and quickly grasp environmental concepts, except of course when the problem is the ravaged ecology of their rooms. Indeed, they take so readily to the grimmer tasks of recycling that it almost makes one believe those early utopian thinkers envisioned troupes of joyously fulfilled infant garbage collectors.

   Given how easy it is to make children appreciate the mystery and fragility of the earth -- and the urgency of safeguarding it -- one can only marvel that so many recent books have (so to speak) muddied the issues. A new subspecies of children's literature has arrived to alarm tiny potential polluters with apocalyptic sermons on our dying planet, to lecture them on their obligations to plant trees or to inspire them with rapturous, unconvincing hymns to the vanishing pleasures of unspoiled woodlands and beaches.

   Little Alex does indeed want a dinosaur, and Alex's grandfather -- a faintly raffish and endearing saxophone-playing old hipster -- takes on the surprisingly simple task of satisfying his grandson's desire. Fans of Satoshi Kitamura's previous books -- among them "When Sheep Cannot Sleep" and "Angry Arthur," which were also written by Hiawyn Oram -- will recognize the wittily detailed, wildly animated London cityscape, and perhaps even Fred the dinosaur, a benign version of the monsters lurking everywhere (though noticed only by Lily's dog) in Mr. Kitamura's "Lily Takes a Walk."

   Buying a pet at the Dino-Store is a simple transaction, but dinosaur care and maintenance prove to be a tall order. Fred, a female whose apt real name is The One Who Eats Everything, is an affectionate but high-maintenance family addition. Fred has demanding dietary requirements ("two bags of fossils soaked in all the milk in the fridge, one drum of dried club-moss tree, three sacks of pine needles, the washing, the neighbor's zucchini, and a bite out of the next-door-but-one's cat") and her own design and comfort ideas: interior redecoration through chewing. Fred's stressful efforts to adjust to her new environment, and to lonely exile in the Pets' Corner of Alex's restrictive classroom, soon take a heavy emotional toll on the sensitive dinosaur. When a sympathetic veterinarian advises a restorative walk in the country, Alex and his grandfather discover that a "crusty old swamp" offers Fred the joys of home for which she has been pining.

   Here, too, the drearily literal-minded may feel compelled to point out that extinct species are not a shopping item for sale at the local Dino-Store -- a caveat that even small children will no doubt reward with superior, knowing smirks. They know dinosaurs are extinct, just as they know their room is different from the forest. And the more fully they understand this -- the more engagingly it's suggested in the most inventive and least literal-minded books -- the better the chance that all of us won't go the way of Dinosaur Fred.

By Francine Prose

This review first appeared in Publishers Weekly, April 5, 1991 v238 n16 p143(1).

   His friend Alice has two snails, Ben has a dog and Alex is absolutely desperate to own a dinosaur. His grandfather says, "A boy wants a dinosaur this much, a boy should have a dinosaur." At the Dino-Store Alex falls in love with a female Massospondylus, which he buys and names Fred. The logistics of owning such a monstrous pet are daunting: dinosaurs eat constantly ("two bags of fossils soaked in all the milk in the fridge" are but a snack), while the requisite marsh that Alex builds overflows the confines of the bathroom. Soon Fred isn't as spunky as she once was and Alex and his grandfather walk her out into the country were she perks up considerably at the sight of "a crusty old swamp." In a snappy surprise ending, Alex reconsiders pet ownership--in more realistic terms.

   Oram's gently raucous sense of humor is fully exercised in this droll tale. Exhibiting their characteristic clarity and angularity, Kitamura's (When Sheep Cannot Sleep; Lily Takes a Walk) illustrations brim with fanciful details. Ages 3-6. (Apr.)

By Diane Roback; Richard Donahue
Review Grade: A