Dinosaurs Roar, Butterflies Soar!

by Bob Barner

Overview

What are as light as a feather and as old as the dinosaurs? Butterflies! With a lively text and vibrant paper-collage illustrations, award-winning author Bob Barner brings us a wonderful look at the amazing history of butterflies, and how their lives intersected with the dinosaurs millions of years ago. Readers will be fascinated to discover that when they stop to admire a beautiful butterfly, a dinosaur may have once done the same! This gorgeous, rollicking, informative book is sure to become a favorite of budding scientists everywhere.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781452113777
Publisher:	Chronicle Books LLC
Publication date:	03/16/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	8 MB
Age Range:	2 - 5 Years

About the Author

Bob Barner was born in Arkansas, grew up in the midwest and now lives in Northern California. He graduated from The Columbus College of Art and Design in Columbus, Ohio where he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. He has worked as an art therapist and an art director at several advertising agencies and design studios and has also assisted Al Capp with the writing and drawing for the popular comic strip Li'l Abner. Barner works with pen and ink, watercolor, cut and torn paper as well as three dimensional materials.

Editorial Reviews

Barner revisits the weighty subjects of his popular Dinosaur Bones, looking at how butterflies coexisted with dinosaurs: "By spreading pollen from bloom to bloom, butterflies helped flowering plants flourish. Flowering plants made more air for dinosaurs to breathe and huge amounts of food for them to eat." Each double spread's format is the same: one sentence in colorful, blocky typeface sits amid the artist's bold cut-paper designs, the entire layout backed with a single, vivid hue. Additional facts in smaller type extend the narrative. The inviting, flashy interplay of the many colors, patterns and textures (e.g., painted butterfly wings are thinly edged in flower motifs) establishes an upbeat tone-except for the nearly monochromatic spread on dinosaur extinction. "But butterflies lived!" the next page reads, as two enormous specimens perch on flowers. An easy-to-read time line contextualizes the chronology of the first dinosaurs, flowers and butterflies (and even cats, dogs and humans) as a smattering of facts about seeds, insects or dinosaurs rounds out this aesthetic extension of a popular topic. Ages 4-8. (May)

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Publishers Weekly

Gr 1-3

This gently informative book describes the role butterflies played in helping dinosaurs and their environment flourish. The main text offers a simpler narrative than the supplementary and more detailed one in small type that appears below or next to it. A close-up of an electric blue dinosaur with a butterfly on its snout accompanies the revelation that, after living together on Earth for millions of years, "suddenly, their time together ended." A few of the predominant theories about the dinosaurs' extinction and explanations of the continuing survival of butterflies are put forth. A final spread adds fun factoids about dinosaur and insect life. Barner's illustrations are, as always, fantastically bright, eye-catching cut-paper collages. A useful, engaging, and illuminating book.-Susan Weitz, formerly at Spencer-Van Etten School District, Spencer, NY

School Library Journal

Barner goes prehistoric once again (Dinosaur Bones, 2001), but this time he pairs gigantic beasts with the tiniest of companions-butterflies. Millions of years ago butterflies helped to pollinate plants, which in turn increased the dinosaurs' food supply and enriched the air with oxygen. The author tells this scientific story on two levels: Simple details appear in large, prominent type, while smaller, additional information reaches out to older readers, making it one of those "works on two levels" books that really does work. The attempt to explain extinction-a fate that butterflies luckily escaped-flirts with oversimplification, but the bright, fiery asteroid crashing across the page will be popular with children (flaming rock never fails to captivate). Vibrant paper collage in highly saturated colors and playful perspectives add texture and layers to this unlikely symbiotic duo. The text reminds readers at the end that "the next time you see a fluttering butterfly or smell a flower...millions of years ago a T. rex may have done the same." Dino fanatics will revel in the personal connection. (timeline, appended facts) (Informational picture book. 4-8)

Kirkus Reviews