Dino Tracks

Gr 2–4—Donald examines fossilized footprints and attempts to put them in perspective for a younger crowd. She does this through rhymed stanzas that are often forced and campy. Helpful facts and explanations are buried within the text. The dinosaurs are colorful and even feathered, yet the text references fictional Jurassic Park, "where dinos come to life?/The raptors shown there are certain to scare,/with claws sharp as a knife," then refers to their claws as "tappity." Kurtz uses a similar jumpy rhyme to explore marine life. While Molly Bang and Penny Chisholm's Ocean Sunlight (Scholastic, 2012) and Erich Hoyt's Weird Sea Creatures (Firefly, 2013) use both photographs and illustrations to illuminate the bizarre world deep below the surface, Kurtz's book feels dark and murky. Further, much of the illustration is lost in the gutter; most notably, an anglerfish is reduced to tail, lure, and gaping maw. This book touches on some fantastic topics like whale fall, marine snow, bioluminescence, and bacterial involvement at many depths, but it never gives facts with any complexity. The back matter attempts to fill in the holes left in the spare rhymed texts, but it is too small and verbose for early science readers.—Leila Sterman, Montana State University Library, Bozeman