Dinos Driving

DINOS DRIVING is a cute and silly picture book that imagines different dinosaurs driving vehicles. For instance, Iguanadon drives an electric car, and Diplodicus drives a bus. The end of the book includes simple facts about each of the dinosaurs, and some ideas to extend the learning with your child.

What I loved: This is such a simple but fun concept for a book. Children will love seeing the different dinosaurs driving vehicles, such as tyrannosaurus on a monster truck. The illustrations are simple with bright colors and a focus on the vehicles. The font is clear and large on each page. The story will invite children to think of what kind of vehicles they would love to drive as well as to think about the dinosaurs. Simple facts at the end give a bit of educational value to start little ones learning about dinos.

What left me wanting more: As a small thing, it would be helpful to have facts along with the driving or something to add to the educational value throughout. Pronunciation guides would also be nice for dinosaurs that caregivers may not already know too.

Final verdict: A cute and silly read, DINOS DRIVING is a simple picture book that invites readers to have fun with dinos.

What I liked:
Each page introduces a species of dinosaurs, such as velociraptor or brachiosaurus, and states what kind of car they would drive. At the end of the book, there is a page with each of the dinosaurs and one characteristic. It turns out the Iguanadon is a vegetarian, so I guess the idea is that he was also conscious of his impact on the environment. Some of the car choices are a little more obvious; for example, the Diplodocus (again, I had no idea this was a type of dinosaur and not a loaded chip dip) is very long, so he drives a school bus because it is a long vehicle.

Final verdict:
Aside from the insanely long dino names, the book is relatively easy to read. Each page has one line of text and an obvious picture. The sentence structure is pretty repetitive, with most pages reading something like Dinosaur Name drives a Vehicle Name. The font is colorful, bold, and relatively large. The background of the pages is white, and the pictures are not overwhelming or distracting. I recommend this book to parents or teachers of young children in the age 3-8 range who enjoy dinosaurs and are beginning to explore repetitive beginner books with increasing independence.