Prehistoric Actual Size

The Bibliography
Jenkins, Steve. 2005. Prehistoric Actual Size. Boston. Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0618535780

The Criteria
Accuracy The short bits of information about the prehistoric creatures in Prehistoric Actual Size are easy to read and to the point. Each creature listed shows a time period of when it lived and its size. Each creature also has a pronunciation guide if the name is difficult to say, which helps children with their accuracy. At the end of the book, there is a section of how they know what they know, which explains that the illustrations in the book are not exactly accurate, but they are as accurate as possible based on comparisons of fossils found to skeletons of animals that are alive today.

Organization Since the book is so short, it does not have page numbers, a table of contents, index, etc, but it's a quick, informational read for kids, so such things are not exactly necessary.

Design The illustrations are the selling point of this book. They are "actual size," so kids will find it very interesting to see how big a real life dinosaur was!

Style The style of Prehistoric Actual Size is perfect for anyone who wants a quick glimpse into the life size eyes of a protoceratops, or the life size teeth of a giganotosaurus. The information is easy to read, see and understand.

The Analysis
This book was a lot of fun to read and was especially enjoyable to look at. I love cut paper artwork, so seeing gigantic claws of prehistoric monsters made that way was exciting for me. The four page spread of the head of an enormous dsungaripterus, a flying reptile with a ten-foot wingspan was fantastic. I loved the quick facts, too, less than a paragraph for each creature means a fun and easy read for all ages. This book is all about the art and the art is great! So if a=b and b=c, then a=c, right? This book is great!

The Review
Susan Hepler, Ph.D. (Children's Literature)
Using many illustrations which feature the part for the whole, Jenkins involves dinosaur lovers in the next thinking level. In his signature collage illustration, Jenkins shows in actual sizes a small shark, a horned meat-eating amphibian, part of a dragonfly too big to fit on the page, and on into heads, a giant set of teeth, an astounding claw, and a baby protoceratops being looked upon by his mother’s gimlet eye. It invites readers to consider how big things are and, by inference, how we can tell the size from the fragment at hand. Each spread states how many millions of years ago the animal lived and what its actual size was. The payoff for older readers is the 4-page back matter in which each animal depicted gets a full picture--although not to scale--and a paragraph about it. While younger readers will surely love this book, it seems to belong in an slightly older age group.

The Connection
Since I love cut paper art so much, a fun project would be to share other books by Steve Jenkins, like Actual Size and Never Smile At a Monkey, then make cut paper artwork of our own, maybe even life size self-portraits, and bind them together in a book to put on display!