Why Kids Love Dinosaurs in Space: A Book Review

There is room in science for abject, over-the-top silliness. Young audiences, the kinds that embrace illustrated books like a cat to a laser pointer need the silly, but sometimes yearn for the science. Dinosaurs In Space hammers into that void with the subtlety of your neighbor’s use of the leaf blower at 7:30 on Saturday morning. This is an illustrated book that asks a question without directly posing it, allows kids to imagine the impossible, but tells them that it just might be probable. It breaks the fourth wall, weaves in non-fiction STEM, makes readers laugh and achieves the very difficult task of making a page-turner book for the illustrated audience.

The page-turner description is usually reserved for novels where audiences find it challenging to put the book down. For upper-elementary and middle school audiences that can be ascribed to The Hunger Games, How to Capture an Invisible Cat or any of Tobin’s other books. However, illustrated books are shorter and their audiences have an even shorter attention span. Their ability to tune out or become distracted during story is enviable and makes Pavlov’s dog seem like it has the patience of Job.

The Monster At The End of this Book is the non-dinosaur, STEM-free, picture book cousin of Dinosaurs In Space. In that classic book there’s one monster talking directly to the audience until its eventual payoff that, spoiler alert, Grover is the monster. In this book there are a series of dinosaurs who speak to audiences about the absurd possibility of dinosaurs in space. It tackles the elephant in the room head on by illogical, but very intriguing image of dinosaurs, albeit it with space helmets on their heads, in space.

That’s exactly what you thought of, isn’t it? For me it could be because I’ve seen any one of the Alien movies too often, even the bad ones. A dinosaur in space must truly be an acid bleeding, Exomorph that will probably be responsible for the end of civilization on Earth. Nay, these dinosaurs are curious, funny, envious of their space-walking brethren and worried about their future when they see an asteroid heading towards Earth 66 million years ago.

The dinosaurs are offended when the book cover’s their pending doom because, “they don’t like to talk about that.” Our dinosaur narrators point out that the birds of today are the dinosaurs of yesterday. They point out that the asteroid killer hit the planet with such force that it probably sent ashes of thousands of burned up animals to the moon. This doesn’t mean that there are zombie dinosaurs on the moon.

Thankfully, Dinosaurs In Space shows an illustration of what our imagination has already conjured up, and as the bonus of a fleshed-out dinosaur chasing an astronaut on the moon. This segues nicely into a pair of talk show dinosaurs who realize that the books about to lose focus and the two of them assuring the audience that they won’t let that happen. You get the point. This is a fun book that brings up the specter of silly things young audiences, let alone the adults who might be reading it to them have never thought-but can’t stop thinking about it after the thought has entered our flesh dome.

For a time, a very silly, fun, engaging period, Dinosaurs In Space will be a kid’s best friend. Those early elementary ages who simply want to have fun can have said fun while sounding out words, laughing at the book’s illustrations or having the book read to them. It’s educational without being wonky or boring. This is the absurd science class that middle and high school students want to take and will fill up every semester. It’s an illustrated book that ages four through eight will laugh at, borrow from the library, walk away to the reading corner with, giggle to themselves about zombie dinosaurs and share it with their dinosaur-loving friends.

Dinosaurs In Space is by Todd Sturgell and is available on Sourcebooks Explore.

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