Prehistoric Actual Size
by Steve Jenkins
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Book Summary Information
Author: Steve JenkinsEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-09-26
ISBN: 0618535780
Number of pages: 36
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Books for Children
Book Reviews of Prehistoric Actual Size
Book Review: Size matters
Summary: 5 Stars
In this crazed topsy-turvey world, it's always nice to have something to hold on to. Like the fact that small children are obsessed with dinosaurs, for example. Year after year, babies are born, mature, and grow into bright-eyed preschoolers who shriek continually for just one thing: DINOSAUR BOOKS!!!!! There are worse things in the world. As a children's librarian I see new dino books all the time and usually they're so dull and rote that it's all I can do to keep from falling asleep as I process them. Now about a year ago I had the good fortune to stumble across Steven Jenkins' brilliant, "Actual Size". Cunningly playing on a child's need to interact with a non-fiction title, Jenkins created gorgeous pictures of large and small animals from around the globe at their actual size. Sometimes only a single eye of a critter would fill a page. Other times, you could fit a tiny monkey within the palm of the smallest hand. "Prehistoric Actual Size" takes the already grand idea of giving us life-sized cut-out illustrations and mixes in the already existing need for dinosaurs, ancient gigantic millipedes, terror birds, and other animals that no longer exist today. And how the children now wish that they did.
The book knows who its audience it. It gently shows a tiny morgan's tooth that's a mere 4-inches-long on the title page. From this tiny mammal (an ancestor, one might wonder) we turn the page and find ourselves staring at a particularly malevolent Velociraptor (with feathers, no less). Serving the kiddies exactly what they want right from the start allows Jenkins to insert little-known prehistoric goodies alongside the better known. A tiny protozoan the size of a period in this sentence stands beside a sea scorpion of 2 meters or so. Kids will meet creatures they've never even heard of, like the flightless and eight foot tall terror bird that ran as fast as a modern horse. Or the rabbit-like Epigaulus with horns and long claws to match. By the end they'll have gone close to a baryonyx's foot and counted the sharp teeth in a dinocephalosaurus' mouth. It makes, I can tell you, for riveting reading.
It occurs to me now that if you had a kid that was mighty slow in learning his or her measurements, "Prehistoric Actual Size" (and its predecessor, for that matter) might fall into the category of "godsend". Think about it. Each illustration of a creature in this book comes with a small bit of text underneath the image explaining how large the creature was. Let's say you want to teach kids their inches. Just open the book up to the picture of the Saltopus and point out that this smallest of dinosaurs was a mere 24 inches long. In the case of the Velociraptor, a measuring stick could be laid out on top of the book on the ground and an adult could show a kid just how long 6 feet really are. Kids can imagine the dinosaur reposing on the ground, only its maliciously toothy face visible from the book's pages. Math teachers should sit up and take notice. Measuring prehistoric animals and insects might make boring old inches to centimeter discussions into riveting experiments.
Jenkins' illustrations are, as always, remarkable. And for the first time I noticed a real attention to details that most cut-paper artists would never even think of in the first place. Sometimes an animal's eye will contain just the right circle of white felt, giving the eyeballs a shiny glint that would otherwise be lacking. Stare at the pictures long enough and you begin to get a feel for what Jenkins has been able to accomplish.
Just in case you pick up this book, flip through it, and give a cry of rage that the critter on the cover is never defined, merely turn the book over and note that on the back cover we are told that this is the beaky maw of an adult Protoceratops. A baby Protoceratops crawls out of its shell to show yet another difference in size. Comparisons between this book and the original "Actual Size" are inevitable. "Actual Size", it occurs to me, did a better job with pure scale. You'd find yourself face-to-eyeball with a giant squid on one page, and then trace the long loopy two-foot tongue of an anteater on another. Here that kind of whimsy is lacking. Jenkins eschews the idea of cramming a creature's extremities (or whatever a tongue constitutes) onto a single page. Though the giant millipede does give the viewer a good visceral shock, the pure pleasure of "Actual Size" feels a bit diluted. A bit strained. Still, none of this is to say that the book won't appeal to the kiddies. I suspect that due to its subject matter, "Prehistoric Actual Size" will be garnering a whole new fan base for itself, all thanks to the dinos within.
The idea that something educational can also be fun has been done to death, and usually with deeply un-fun results. "Preshistoric Actual Size" is an exception to that rule. Incredibly informative, beautiful to the eye, and accurate within an inch of its life, Steve Jenkins makes an almost wholly wonderful addition to his already fabulous cut-paper picture books. A title to put Ezra Jack Keats to shame.
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