Earlier this year, after moving into my new place, I dug up some of the boxes in my parent’s basement to consolidate and prune my collections. Of course, digging up some childhood favorites, I had to pause to flip through them again, reminding me of days past when there was plenty of time to read, whether on hot summer days or cold winter nights. Many of these books were Christmas or birthday gifts, of course, the inscriptions from family members still scrawled on the inside covers, 1988, 1990, 1994. How well did they hold up?

                                                          

 

Animalia and the Discovery of Dragons by Graeme Base

 

Australian writer and illustrator Graeme Base was always one of my favorite authors in elementary school and soon after finding his alphabet book Animalia in my primary school library, I became entranced with studying each lush, beautiful page filled with larger than life animals, trying to come up with all of the hidden alphabetical items for each letter. Each letter includes a funny poem highlighting it, such as "Lazy Lions Lounging in the Local Library," which became kind of my mantra.

 

This eye for detail and humor continued with the Discovery of Dragons, published some years later; by that time I was a fantasy-loving kid, and the weird, pseudo-scientific historic examination of the various dragon species was very interesting to me. I'd recommend any of Base's work for story times.

 

                                                      

 

Of course, my favorite topic as a kid was definitely dinosaurs, so these imaginative, amazingly detailed books by James Gurney were some of my favorites. Framed as a recovered nature journal of a nineteenth century professor and his son shipwrecked in a lost world of sentient, peaceful dinosaurs, Gurney's paintings really bring the world to life. A true utopia, there is no real conflict (though are some delicious explorations and mysteries of this ancient world), but the story is really told through the pictures. While the dinosaurs themselves are a little old fashioned in their forms (no feathers, a little lumbery), how can one knock messages like "weapons are enemies, even to their owners?" Those dinos have some pretty compelling ideas! 

 

 

I recall spending a lot of time as a kid looking at the art in this lushly illustrated book, which is beautiful and captivating (particularly the little details and asides the fill many of the paintings), but I do not recall if I’d actually read the story. James C. Christensen, a renowned fantasy artist, paints vibrant, ethereal paintings filled with detail, natural and mystical.

 

However, the story is pretty facile and the writing far blander than in Dinotopia, in spite of a similar premise. An answer to Darwin’s HMS Beagle, the Victorian Professor Algernon Aisling, his daughters, and a dashing crew of dwarves and gremlins set out to chart the realms of the imagination, though their results, while enchanting, are rather uninspiring. 

Picking up quite the menagerie of mythical creatures along the way, less and less space is allowed to give anyone a personality and sometimes we forget they’re there at all; occasionally, they are re-mentioned as if to say, oh yeah, don’t forget, the Sphinx is still there too! Maybe its just because I'm not religious, but the message here, "by believing, one sees," comes off as a bit of a platitude to me. 

 

 

This was, I think, the first picture book I recall being read as a child. It may have sparked the obsession with owls I had until after first grade. I remember my Mom reading it to me, as well as listening to the gentle narration on cassette tape. Jane Yolen’s magical, spare language, and the evocative art of brings this moonlit winter landscape alive, celebrating the natural world. I still enjoy walking around in the snow at night, and throughout my childhood became obsessed with owls, especially owl calls, often going to sleep listening to cassette tape recordings of the calls of various wildlife. 

 

 

 

I checked Patricia McKissack's The Dark-Thirty from my middle school library in 6th grade, and it became a great introduction into the world of American, specifically African American, folklore, like nothing I'd heard before. Referencing the half an hour around sunset as the time best suited for telling ghost, the stories here are definitely spine tinglers! For some reason, I read this around Christmas, which while not really thematic seemed to suit the dark but hopeful tone of these spooky stories, as it is simultaneously the darkest and the most festive time of the year. 

 

Upon returning to the book, the best aspect was that each of the stories, in addition to ghosts, monsters, witches, and other scary supernatural creatures, confront a different aspect of the oppression faced by Black Americans throughout US history, introducing readers to these topics. The evocative, moody drawings by Brian Pinkney compliment them perfectly. I definitely recommend this one! 

 

 

 

 

 

Author and illustrator James Gurney, noted for his book Dinotopia, has also done a host of non-dino illustrations. This one was for the National Geographic centennial. He has illustrated animals, scenes from history and fantasy stories. Enjoy checking out his work at his website http://jamesgurney.com/. 

 

*5+ Stars*

*The Gush*

As I stated in my review of the first book in this series, this was one of the major series of my childhood. I read the first book a dozen times over...and then the sequel was published. I bought it basically as soon as it came out and have treasured it ever since. I was so excited that another whole book with beautiful paintings and a great story would add to my knowledge of such a strange and intriguing place, and it does not disappoint.

*5 + infinity Stars*

*The Gush*

I can't state enough how much I love this book. This book and the sequel were some of the few books I ever bought for myself during my childhood that weren't either at Walmart or at a used bookstore (if the book is in perfect condition, isn't it always better to get more for your money?).

I didn't know it at the time, but pretty much I had kids so I could go through the dinosaur phase with them. Again. I love dinosaurs. We have a membership at the local science museum mostly so that I can go and stare at the bones and imagine their munching grandeur. I mean, yeah, the kids like the games and stuff, and who doesn't like a miniature tornado, but it's the dinosaurs that get me all worked up. Standing under the massive bones of a dipodocus, considering the weight of flesh and the improbable heft of their being, herds of them roaming the lost plains by the inland sea, good god. It's so awesome, in the original sense of the word.

But the other amazing thing about dinosaurs is how they continue to be imagined and reimagined by artists and dreamers, as the facts come in and are reinterpreted. History is a lost continent, and paleohistory so much more lost and such a different continent that the spaces for our imagination to blossom are so much greater. The first dinosaur understood as such was discovered by a beach-combing Victorian girl, an Ichthyosaur. (Though, technically, this is not a dinosaur, but a member of the aquatic version. ) Victorians threw dinners in the bellies of imagined beasts, laying the iguanodon on its belly and mistaking its sharp thumbs for horns. We play in dinosaurs. We get it wrong but that is not the point.



Anyway, this sweet little book completely hits all my dino-buzzers. It's got one of those horror-story glosses on it, where the editor claims to have found a journal in the British Museum or something. The journal is a Victorian naturalist's musings after his shipwreck with his son on a lost continent called Dinotopia. It's like King Kong or Robinson Crusoe without the racism. The boy and his son meet up with the denizens of Dinotopia, picaresqueing their way through various locales and peoples. The plot is pretty light, just people finding their ways through an unknown world, though there is a little light romance if you're into that sort of thing. Dinotopia is a place where dinosaurs and people live in mostly harmony and arggghhghhgh, I so want to shipwreck there.



The art makes this book. There's so much nerding to be had here: quick portraits of people, details of the stages of development in eggs, pages of detailed paintings of flowers and lost cycads. (And, seriously, the animals of the Jurassic may have been cool, but a real dino-nerd can flip out for days about how the ginkgo is the only living member of its class. There are evergreens, and deciduous plants, and then there is the ginkgo. It is alone in the world. Sob.) There's sort of a steampunky element to the book: catalogs of harnesses for riding dinos, the Victorian protagonist's wonder at the blank edges of the map, at the filling them in. Arooo!

So, a word of warning, whatever the heck you do, DO NOT rent the miniseries of the same name. I bought it stupidly, in the Last Days of Borders sale, and it ticked me off no end. They take this sweet, non-plot-driven, lazy little tale of wonder and turn it into frakking sullen sibling rivalry from Hades. (I'm trying hard to hew to my not-cussing-in-reviews-of-books-that-don't-have-cussing rule, and it is very difficult.) They misuse David Thewlis, they commit crimes against how understated this book is. Gah. I hates it, my precious. I guess there is even a series, and the very idea of that makes me quail. Sometimes tv is depressing.

So, get this, fellow dino-nerds, and marvel. It's such a wonderful place.