Bound To Stay Bound

Booklist - 04/01/2023 A giant meteor? A rush of volcanoes? Forget all that. Here, a parent sporting a “Dadasaurus” T-shirt tallies a far more entertaining set of extinction events for his inquiring offspring. “Gallimimus,” he claims, “ran with scissors. / Ankylosaurus tipped in their chair,” and whereas “Spinosaurus swam after eating,” T. rex “didn’t change underwear.” It gets worse: “Carnotaurus didn’t wash their hands, / Compsoagnathus stood in shopping carts,” and Gasosaurus tried to light their— well, never mind. Young dinophiles, once they stop chortling, will get the point, as they have for the past 40 years from Marc Brown’s more sedate Dinosaurs, Beware! A Safety Guide. Points for silliness here, though, and Harney ups the hilarity further with scenes of cartoon dinos dashing by in tighty-whities, gorily scratching bug bites, buried beneath debris because they didn’t clean their rooms, or, in the case of the nose-picking Velociraptor, leaving only a tombstone labeled “Death by Booger.” That child and parents are last seen hurtling down the museum’s staircase doesn’t make any of these salutary admonitions less valid. - Copyright 2023 Booklist.

School Library Journal - 05/05/2023 PreS-Gr 2—In this very fictional account of how dinosaurs went extinct, a curious child wants to know what really happened and, of course, Dad has some theories: "Spinosaurus swam after eating," "Compsoagnathus stood in shopping carts," and "dinosaurs didn't clean their rooms and got buried." Of course, these notions hilariously coincide with common parent and child situations; will his tactics work on his own child? Harney's illustrations of exaggerated facial expressions pair perfectly with the expressive text to accurately depict the emotions of every character. While the mother objects to the father's antics at first, the pictures and speech bubbles show her dawning understanding of his purpose. Dyckman's humor has done it again. For youngsters who love dinosaurs, this is the perfect book to get them giggling while also learning a little bit about these extinct animals; the theories are silly in nature, but the pictures and pronunciations provided are accurate throughout. VERDICT Elementary classrooms and libraries will benefit by including this book, sure to be loved by primary students.—Kerra Mazzariello - Copyright 2023 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission.