Flip-o-saurus [Board book]

By turning over the flaps of this clever book, you can put together 1,000 imaginary dinosaurs, like the Stegodocus, the Oviplosaurus, or the Diploraptops. Each dinosaur has fascinating information about its head, body, and tail–so you can make your own Flip-o-saurus and see what it can do!

Gr 1-3–Moments of entertainment may be provided by this oversize, cut-page gallery that invites children to mix and match the heads, bodies, and tails of 10 dinosaurs. Brief descriptive comments at the base of each flap offer further opportunity for hilarity: the Diplo-Thyo-Ryx, for instance, announces that My neck is twenty feet long, I live in the ocean, and My long, bony tail is covered in colorful feathers. Printed on heavy card stock, Ball's painted portraits are big and bright enough to draw even younger children–but the appeal will be strictly ephemeral and next to the oldie but goodie Dinosaur Mix-Up (Starlight Editions, 1990), the number of possible choices here is downright paltry. —School Library Journal

The simple but clever design of this book splits each cardboard page into three segments, chopping 10 different dinosaurs into fronts, middles, and backs to be mixed and matched at will. Their names and attributes also get divided up (e.g., ending in “-tops” means a creature would have a “short, heavy tail”), but this should be taken more as ways to come up with wacky-sounding names than scientific insights. It’s hard not to foresee dino-crazy kids having oodles of fun with this book, arguing endlessly over the relative merits of the Diplooptesaurus versus the Tyrannoploryx. Grades 1-3. —Booklist

ArtistSara Ballis a prolific illustrator of children's books, many of them concerning modern or prehistoric animals.