FLORIAN POETRY

Florian, Douglas. Dinothesaurus. New York. Atheneum Books. 2009

ISBN: 978-1-4169-7978-4

Dinothesaurus by Douglas Florian is a book of poetry which puts a humorous spin on the paleontological subject of dinosaurs. The poems in this book give the reader useful and factual information about dinosaurs in such a way, that the reader will able to remember the information.

Through the rhyming schemes of the poems, children will love hearing/reading about the “pterrifying pterosaurs” and the “Giganotosaurus” which takes “giga-bites.”  The use of descriptive words in the poems will enhance the image one gets of these long, extinct creatures. “A lashing, slashing dino-saw” from the poem “Baryonyx” brings forth the image of a large dinosaur with sharp claws. “You have a frail and fragile frame” from the poem “Micropachycephalosaurus” takes us to the other end of the spectrum with an image of a small, delicate dinosaur.

Florian’s poems in this book are of good quality and the attention to details about the dinosaurs will appeal to children. This is evident in the poem, “Deinonychus,” in which the poet describes the claws and jaws of this dinosaur and how it hunted. All of the poems in this book give this same attention to detail. The illustrations are reminiscent of collages and continue the detail and humor found throughout the poems.

The book begins with a poem about the dinosaur age and ends with a poem about the end of the dinosaur age. The pages are numbered along with a table of contents and included on each page is a pronunciation guide for each dinosaur type. The “Glossarysaurus” at the end of the book gives more information about the dinosaurs in the poems. Also included is a list of dinosaur museums, fossil sites and further reading material which might be of interest to the reader.

SPOTLIGHT POEM:

Giganotosaurus

JIG-ah-not-oh-SAW-rus (giant southern lizard)

By Douglas Florian

One hundred million years before us

Lived the Giga-not-o-saurus.

Gigantic, titanic, enormous, colossal-

What once was humongous is now just a fossil.

When it was hungry or got into fights,

It opened its jaws and took giga-bites.

This poem is a good poem to use to work on synonyms. First, I would have the students read the poem to themselves then out loud as a group. We would discuss which words in the poem describe the Giganotosaurus. I would lead the students to discover that these words are synonyms – different words that have the same meaning. The students could then pick one of the other dinosaurs in the book and use a thesaurus to find several synonyms to describe the dinosaur they picked.

Art Extension:

Students could create their own dinosaur picture and use small bits of construction paper and/or tissue paper to make it collage-like as depicted by the illustrations from the book.