Dinothesaurus

Florian, D. (2009). Dinothesaurus. New York, NY: Atheneum Books for Young Readers. 

 

    

  

     Dinothesaurus is a wonderfully illustrated specialized poetry book about dinosaurs by Douglas Florian.  There are twenty poems beginning with “The Age of Dinosaurs” to poems about individual dinosaurs to “The End of Dinosaurs”.  The title for each of the poems about an individual dinosaur is the name of the dinosaur.  Florian provides the pronunciation and what the word means, for example:     

Giganotosaurus - JIG-ah-not-oh-SAW-rus (giant southern lizard).

The poems describe the dinosaur in a fun, upbeat way.  At the end of the book there is a “Glossarysaurus” where the reader is given more information about each dinosaur/poem.  Florian also included a list of Dinosaur Museums and Fossil Sites and selected further reading. 

        The first and last poems in this book are narrative poems. “The Age of Dinosaurs” includes a sequence of events, the poem tells the reader about the three time-periods of the dinosaurs, Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous.  The last poem, “The End of Dinosaurs” tells a story by giving a theory as to why the dinosaurs no longer exist.  The other eighteen poems are lyrics as they describe each dinosaur.  Florian used rhyme throughout the book to give each poem a rhythm.  Some of the poems had lines that rhymed with the pervious line (“Stegoceras”), and other poems every other line rhymed  (“Troodon”).

Stegoceras                                                                        Troodon

“Thick head. Brick head. Hard head, too.                       "Said to be brainy.

Round head. Mound head. Odd head, you.”                    Said to be bright.

                                                                                  But what did it read?

                                                                                  And what did it write?”

Florian uses figurative language in his poems.  In the poem “Seismosaurus” he uses a simile to compare the size of a Seismosaurus to a lake. He uses a simile again in “Ankylosaurus”; he says that this dinosaur is “tough as tanks and hard as nails”. 

          Dinothesaurus would be a wonderful book to include in any elementary class. Younger students are amazed by dinosaurs and love poems that rhyme and Florian has given them both.  This book would be appropriate to use during a unit of study on dinosaurs to show students examples of different dinosaurs and what they were known for.  It could also be used during a unit on poetry to show the different poetic forms. Each of Florian’s poems were written and organized in a different way in this book, some had multiple stanzas while others had one. Some of the poems were couplets, only two lines, while others were quatrains, four lines. BIG questions to ask:

·     What if you could talk to a dinosaur, what would you ask it?

·     If you could be a dinosaur for a day, which dinosaur would you be and why?

       I am a big fan of using poetry in the classroom and use it almost daily.  Unfortunately, I had never heard of Douglas Florian until now and have not had the opportunity to use his work in my classroom.  After reading Dinothesaurus and Mammalabilia I plan to include his work in my lessons.