I find it hard to keep up with Lara's appetite for books which is why I was pleased to be asked, by the author, to review Dino Express. Dino Express is a picture story book by Tim Beaumont and the front cover boasts amazing pop-ups, pull-tabs, lift-up flaps and glow-in-the-dark ink. Sounds amazing!Unfortunately the pop-ups, tabs and flaps were a bit of a disappointment (Lara owns some pretty awesome pop-up books) and the glow-in-the-dark ink is only effective at bedtime. Mind you, the book, as you can see from the images in this blog post, features some brilliant imagery with bright colours and impressive patterns of trees and flowers.
The story of Dino Express is about three 'Dinos' who are searching for the biggest 'Dino' by travelling on the Dino Express. Like many story books for young children, it uses repetition to build the excitement of the story but I found that the repeated sections took up too much of the book.
Throughout the book I struggled with the rhyming and scansion of the words (I assume it was supposed to rhyme and scan) - in places the rhymes were contrived and didn't naturally roll off the tongue. I also found the layout of the words on the page to be all over the place and sometimes I didn't know where to read from next. Unfortunately this means that I don't enjoy reading Dino Express to Lara as it is all too much like hard work for me.However, Lara seems to enjoy it and will regularly ask us to read it to her several times in a row. I think this is partly to do with the bright illustrations but has a lot to do with the simple fact that it features dinosaurs - children are fascinated by them. Lara also seems to get a lot of pleasure out of the surprise ending every time we read Dino Express.
