Ten Terrible Dinosaurs by Paul Stickland
| Ten Terrible Dinosaurs by Paul Stickland | |
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| Category: For Sharing | |
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Reviewer: Sam Tyler
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| Summary: Count the dinosaurs from ten to one in this first numbers book that dinosaur lovers will enjoy and others may find a little flat. | |
| Buy? Maybe | Borrow? Maybe |
| Pages: 48 | Date: December 2016 |
| Publisher: Macmillan Children's Books | |
| External links: Author's website | |
| ISBN: 9781509835522 | |
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Some things are easier to count than others. How many pens are there on the desk is simple enough. A little trickier is the number of cars on the road, but stand back and you can see them. The fact is that the bigger something is, the further you will need to be from it to count more than one. What would happen though if you were counting something that was not only big, but moving and also prone to eating you?
Ten Terrible Dinosaurs are all playing together, but one by one they fall off until there is only one. Taking the form of a classic reverse counting book, Paul Stickland takes an early reader on a journey from many, to few, to one.
The counting book is a stalwart of children's books and for the adult helping, they are not always the most exciting books as you pretty much know what is going to happen. The best of them mix things up by putting the numbers into a story or using great illustrations so that the images entertain where the words cannot. Stickland tries to do all of these things, but never manages to make Terrible stand out from the vast crowd.
With the use of dinosaurs the author should be onto a winner, they have been very popular with children for a long time. This is shown in the re-release of this book; originally from 2000, this addition has a new front cover, but appears to be the same book. Seventeen years does not sound a huge length of time, but perhaps it explains why the book feels a little flat. The biggest opportunity that Stickland had in the book is to make the drawings awesome and they are not quite there.
It is hard to fit ten dinosaurs on one page and Stickland struggles. When the number reduces, things improves, but towards the lowest numbers the pages feel a little sparse. The dinos themselves also look a little suspect. They are realistic to a point, but naïve to another. The art style seems to be a little dated; todays children's books are dominated by either high-end detailed illustrations, or deliberately simple takes. Terrible falls between both camps.
The images on offer are to some extent personal preference and the rest of the book holds up. The words are written in a clean font and rhyme well so a child can tell what the next number down is going to be. The problem the book is that it is a simple structure told a little blandly. The function of the book works and a dinosaur mad child will get entertainment from proceeding, but you cannot help but feel there are some better books out there that spark off the page.
A book that makes counting jolly is Bear Counts by Karma Wilson and Jane Chapman, whilst one that makes it a little scary is Ten Little Monsters by Mike Brownlow and Simon Rickerty
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You can read more book reviews or buy Ten Terrible Dinosaurs by Paul Stickland at Amazon.co.uk Amazon currently charges £2.99 for standard delivery for orders under £20, over which delivery is free.
You can read more book reviews or buy Ten Terrible Dinosaurs by Paul Stickland at Amazon.com.
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