Princesses Versus Dinosaurs
Author: Linda Bailey
Illustrator: Joy Ang
Publisher: Tundra Books (September 15, 2020)
Hardcover, 40 pages
Age Range: 3-7 years
Goodreads
Summary
Two popular storybook titans, princesses and dinosaurs, battle to determine who should star in this laugh-out-loud picture book for fans of Shark vs Train and The Book With No Pictures.
This is a princess book!
No, it’s a dinosaur book!
No, it’s . . . a T. rex book? A dragon book? A rubber ducky book?!
From Linda Bailey, award-winning and critically acclaimed author, and Joy Ang, Adventure Time-artist and illustrator of the Mustache Baby series, comes an irresistibly irreverent picture book in which plucky princesses and determined dinosaurs have a battle royale over whose book this is. When they start calling in the big guns — or rather, the big carnivores — and decide to build a wall to resolve their differences, princesses and dinosaurs alike learn a thing or two about open-mindedness and sharing.
Review
This book is really cute and the illustrations are great, but be prepared to do some voices if you’re reading this to kids who can’t read on their own. The first few pages have narration, and then it devolves into all dialogue between the princess and the dinosaurs, which was sort of hard to read. The kids were really entertained by it, but it took some pointing to who was talking and explaining that Dennis is the T-Rex and LOTS of different voices to explain it’s the various people in the book talking. There are some funny plot twists and a final message about both princesses and dragons having stuff to offer and we don’t need to choose just one. Really cute but reads more like a comic book with the really heavy dialogue and the super limited narration.
Guest review by James (age 6):
“I loved the T-Rex and the dragon dragon and the ducky! I love the ending part, like rubber duckyyyyy with the rubbery duckyyyy.”
Where there any parts you didn’t like? “I didn’t like the first part.”
(The review then dissolved into him singing “rubber duckyyyyy” over and over again and distracting his little brother from what he was trying to say.)
Guest review by Link (age 4):
“SO GOOD! And I love the dragon part! It’s everybody book.”
Where there any parts you didn’t like? “I didn’t like the dinosaur parts, I just only didn’t like the dinosaur parts.”
(Regardless, this was the most excited they’ve been to share their thoughts at the end of a book we’ve read for review together, so they were clearly VERY involved!)
A digital ARC of this book was provided by the publisher via NetGalley for review. All opinions are unbiased and my own.
Elley the Book Otter 