Give credit to Shields for putting a little music into some mighty daunting scientific terminology: the proper names of dinosaurs. Who would have ever thought that duckbill and supersaurus would have ever sounded so sweet, or that there even existed a rhyme for late Cretaceous? For those who will be reading this book aloud, be forewarned: Give it a preliminary reading so as not to break the flow of the verse by stumbling over plesiosaurs and Cenozoic.

Despite the fantastical coloration Nash has bestowed on the dinosaurs--and who knows what pigment the dinosaurs sported?--he has given each one a distinct personality that catches their notable characteristics. There are lots of smiles here, and big round eyes, but pentaceratops has his five horns and diplodocus looks like she belongs in a swamp.

And since each dinosaur is a creature unto itself, it gives kids a chance to identify: A library class of five-year-olds quickly chose what beast they wanted to be--they handled their names with surprising dexterity--though each stomped pretty much the same.

Shields also wrote I Am Really a Princess and I Wish My Brother Was a Dog. See also Seymour Simon's They Walk the Earth for some great and strange present-day gatherings of beasts.