(courtesy Harper Collins Publishers Australia)
Now, if dinosaurs hadn’t died out some 65 million years ago when a rather big life-ending asteroid – well, almost life-ending; clearly the mammals dodged a bullet there – hit the earth, then it’s highly possible yoy might have been able to invite them to your festive celebrations.
But, asks Adam Wallace, with some rather brilliantly illustrative backing by Christopher Neilsen, would that have been a very good idea?
In his thoroughly delightful book, A Very Dinosaur Christmas, for kids aged 4-10, and honestly if you like dinosaurs, fun rhyming couplets and vibrantly colourful drawings of dinosaurs and pterodactyls partying away the festive night, and day, for adults too, Wallace muses rather wonderfully on what might should these prehistoric creatures ends up at your event.
Sure, as he says, “You’ve always thought dinosaurs are SUPER fascinating” – and yes, hands up, guilty as charged, we most certainly have – “But …”, and here’s the clincher, ‘… should they REALLY join in with your Christmas celebrating?”
“YES!” you might enthusiastically reply, your child and yep, your INNER child, thrilled at the idea of Dracorex or Brontosaurus adding some bulky terrible lizard fun to festive lunches and dinners, but what if the former chomped on your “fresh and crunchy” Christmas tree or the latter stuck their giant underwear up in lieu of a stocking?
Or what about if all the dinosaurs snored during a Christmas Eve sleepover?
It’s hard enough to get to sleep waiting for Santa but with a dinosaur or ten snoring their snouts off? Well, nigh impossible and you know you can’t be awake when the big man in red shimmies down that chimney of yours.
And don’t even mention what might happen if an ankylosaurus tried to be Santa and go down said chimney but with none of Santa’s magic to smooth the way.
Yeah, Wallace is right – “Well, that’s just tragic!”
But in this gloriously enthusiastic and vibrantly colourful book, Wallace then asks what if a festive pterodactyl swooped down from the sky and took you on a magical flight?
Might that change things then?
Quite possibly, and so, while A Very Dinosaur Christmas begins as a cautionary tale about having dinosaurs chomping all your festive fare in one big, hungry gulp, it ends far more positively with even T. Rex and his impossibly small arms getting just the present they need.
A Very Dinosaur Christmas has just the right amount of playfulness and silliness to it to make it engaging for your little one, and yes, again, you will have a HOOT reading it, with dinosaurs being quite terrible and then not, with pterodactyl sleighs and Triceratops delivering gifts in “their own festive way”.
This absolutely charming board book finishes on a brilliantly festive high note, so much so that the kids in the story not only are thankful the dinosaurs were there for Christmas but want them there for Easter too.
As festive tales go, it has the lot, with gloriously jaunty poetry, artwork to cheer the soul with rich colours and playful scenes, and a warm hug of a sense that Christmas with some prehistoric friends may not be so bad, after all.