great for increasing vocabulary/giving examples of how to add to vocabulary ( )

Once upon a time there were three dinosaurs: A stegosaurus ("Hi"), another stegosaurus ("Hi"), and a stegothesaurus ("Hello! Greetings! Salutations!"). And there is also an Allothesaurus... ( )

Brother to two stegosauruses, our eponymous hero - a stegothesaurus - was a word-loving dinosaur, one who never used one description when he could use three. Then one day he met an allosaurus, or rather, an allothesaurus, and the two bonded over their shared loved of words. Until, that is, our hero learned that the allothesaurus gained her vocabulary skills from EATING a stegothesaurus...

I appreciated both the amusing dialogue and the endearing word-love in Stegothesaurus, and got quite a chuckle from the conclusion, in which our dinosaur hero can suddenly only think of one word. The illustrations by T.L. McBeth, who makes his picture-book debut here, are colorful and cute, in a cartoon-like way, and capture the humor of author Bridget Heos' story quite well. Recommended to dinosaur and/or word-loving young children, and to anyone looking for new picture-books with an oddball sense of humor. ( )