Dinothesaurus: Prehistoric Poems and Paintings by Douglas Florian

Image retrieved from www.amazon.com

Bibliography:

Florian, Douglas. Dinothesaurus: Prehistoric Poems and Paintings. New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2009. ISBN 9781416979784

Review and Critical Analysis:

Douglas Florian presents a collection of dinosaur poetry that is a creative mix of humor and information from beginning to end. In it, he celebrates dinosaurs of all kinds from the times Triassic and Jurassic. The first poem in the collection introduces readers to the beginning of dinosaurs, saying “The dinosaurs / First lived outdoors / During the time Triassic.” The final poem offers possible explanations for their extinction, ending with “What made the dinosaurs extinct? / What do you say? What do you think?” In between these beginning and ending poems are 18 page spreads, each featuring a dinosaur, a poem, and a painting. The contents at the beginning of the book tells readers on which page to find each poem.

Each of Florian’s dinosaur poems is uniquely silly. In the Iguanodon poem, Florian says he wouldn’t want to come upon an Iguanodon, but if he ever did, “I’d wanna / Ask that big IguanoDON: / Where is IguanoDONNA?” In the Baryonyx poem, he tells about what lare and heavy claws the Baryonyx had. He ends it with saying, “If Bary you should ever meet -- / Ask him to scratch your back.” These are only a couple examples of the silliness these poems contain.

However, silliness is definitely not the only appealing thing about his poems. Florian obviously did his research about each of these dinosaurs. Each poem includes the correct pronunciation of the dinosaur’s name (with its name meaning in parentheses) and conveys factual information about the dinosaur it is written about. I was amazed by how much a child could learn about each dinosaur simply by reading Florian’s poems. Poems include information about the dinosaurs’ physical features, whether it was an herbivore or carnivore, what it was known for, and much more. For example, the Stegosaurus poem says, “Ste-go-SAUR-us / Her-bi-VOR-ous / Dined on plants inside the forest. / Bony plates grew on its back, / Perhaps to guard it from attack.” The Tyrannosaurus rex poem says, “Some forty feet long. / Some fourteen feet tall. / Its back limbs were strong. / Its front limbs were small. / Its eyesight was keen. / Its hunger voracious …” The poem goes on with a simplistic, yet detailed, description of one of the most well-known dinosaurs, the T-rex.

In addition to the information given about each dinosaur the poems, Florian supplements each poem by including a “Glossarysaurus” at the end of the book. Here, readers can find even more information about the age of the dinosaurs, the end of the dinosaurs, and about each dinosaur featured in the book. This information includes some name meanings and other interesting facts about each dinosaur. On the final page of the poetry collection, Florian includes a list of “Dinosaur Museums and Fossil Sites” that are located throughout the United States and Canada that children could visit to learn more about dinosaurs.

One of the most appealing things about this book of dinosaur poetry is that each poem’s style is unique. While most of the poems have some sore of rhyme scheme, there are also some written in free verse. Not one poem’s style seems the same, so as the reader turns the pages for the first time, they never know what they’re coming upon. Some poems are written in first person and some are written in third person. The Plesiosaurs poem, written in first person, says, “We’re PLEASE-ee-oh-sawrs. We’re car-ni-vores. / We swim in deep seas, unlike dinosaurs … But we aren’t vicious, we’re very polite -- / We always say PLEASE before we might bite.” This book is a great dinosaur adventure.

Each page spread contains collage art illustrations of the dinosaur to go along with the poem. The humor of the illustrations is no less than that of the poems. The Tyrannosaurus rex, “Its hunger voracious,” spits out huge mixture of real food and paper clippings to show his voracious appetite. The Plesiosaurs are all saying “Please” before they take a bite. Deinonychus, who “could ruin your whole day” is surrounded by newspaper clippings of every day of the week. Micropachycephalosaurus is featured as a small dinosaur in comparison with his hugely long name. In addition to this, mixed into each humorous collage is some type of word art - cut out letters, newspaper clippings, and more. Florian’s mixture of art and poetic information is quite remarkable in this collection of poetry.

Poem Used to Support Critical Analysis:

Giganotosaurus

JIG-ah-not-oh-SAW-rus (giant southern lizard)

One hundred million years before us

Lived the Giga-not-o-saurus.

Gigantic, titanic, enormous, colossal --

What once was humongous is no just a fossil.

When it was hungry or got into fights,

It opened its jaws and took giga-bites.

I would use this poem to begin a unit on poetry. I would have already talked to students about different purposes of poetry. Today we would be talking about informative poetry - poetry that its purpose is to give readers information.

I would ask students what some of their favorite dinosaurs are, or which dinosaurs are the most well-known. I would ask them if they have ever heard of the Giganotosaurus. Likely, students will not have heard of it. This is one of the things that is great about Douglas Florian’s book of dinosaur poetry. He features many lesser-known dinosaurs. I would slowly pronounce the Giganotosaurus’s name and ask students to repeat it after me. I would read them the poem and ask them what they learned about this dinosaur from the poem. Then we would turn to the Glossarysaurus to read more about the Giganotosaurus. We would review how poems have many different purposes, and one of their purposes can be to give information.

As a follow-up activity, students would choose from a list of topics to briefly research and then to write a poem about. They would present their poems to the class to teach their classmates about that topic.