Reviews for In the Past%3A From Trilobites to Dinosaurs to Mammoths in More than 500 Million Years

by David Elliott

Horn Book
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

This collection of imaginative, clever poems about ancient animals (all but one extinct) moves chronologically from trilobites in the Cambrian era to woolly mammoths from our current geologic time period, with good representation across species. The poems are knowing, humorous, and filled with scientific details. Dynamic, creatively composed mixed-media illustrations plunge readers into past environments using awesome, sometimes-scary perspectives. Timeline. (c) Copyright 2018. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.


Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

A dramatic portrait gallery of some of our planet's former residents down through the eras, with pithy odes in rhymed or free verse.Arranged chronologically from a Cambrian Period trilobite to the hairy Mammuthus of the Quaternary, Trueman's 21 subjects loom majesticallysometimes, as in the case of the gore-spattered Dimetrodon or the giant shark Megalodon, in entirely too-close-up views. They are also rendered in such naturalistic detail (for all that some bear almost human expressions) many viewers are likely to flinch as each page is turned. In his short but vivid lines, Elliott generally offers good reasons to be cautious: "The bad news: Like a centipede. Eight feet long. Or more. / The good news: Arthropleura was an herbivore." Or take saber-toothed Smilodon (please): "No compassion. / No tolerance. / No mercy. / No pity. / And definitely no / Here, kitty, kitty, kitty.' " Though the poet generally reflects the visual immediacy of the images, he sometimes takes a broader view; the tadpolelike Astraspis of the early Ordovician is "One note at the beginning / Of a never-ending song," and as for Tyrannosaurus rex, "even kings / are vanquished / when stars fall / from the sky." Many of the informal facts and observations he adds at the end are just as memorably phrased.Highlights from life's last 544 million years infused with humor and wonder. (Picture book/poetry. 5-10) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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