Traveling Dinosaurs

Dinos That Drive – written by Suzy Levinson, illustrated by Dustin Harbin
Tundra Books, 2025

This fanciful and funny book of illustrated poems operates from the premise that dinosaurs engage in a number of human activities. In Dustin Harbin’s clever drawings, they drive tractors, trucks, and buses. They take care of kids, race motorcycles, and ferry fares across the city in taxis. Simultaneously, conversations in word bubbles between other dinosaur characters present accurate information about these prehistoric beasts: “Confession time: Pterodactyls aren’t dinosaurs! They’re actually part of a group of flying reptiles called ‘pterosaurs.’”

Susan Levinson’s poems are as diverse in form as the dinosaurs themselves. From tercets to rhymed quatrains to mini narratives, they all place characters in novel situations, as least for extinct animals. The Maiasaura is busy “herding hatchlings to ballet,” while the Triceratops needs a jeep to ensure that his massive horns don’t hit the roof.  The informational pictures at the bottom of each scene offer a kind of gloss on the fiction, an ongoing reminder that imagination and fact can work together.  Those horns are really a protection from predators, but the humor, bright colors, and animation style zaniness are a motivation to learn and a wild entertainment at the same time.

If dinosaurs as country music performers seems a stretch as long as a Titanosaur’s tail, the weeping, boot-wearing, Iguanadon may convince you otherwise, with his sad lament about being ditched for a Hadrosaur, the one with a distinctive duck bill. The Aquilops in their camper are an adorable reminder that not all dinosaurs were huge. One hundred Aquilops cousins easily fit in their RV, toting “backpacks and snacks.” After all, “Aquilops are so little, each one’s about the size of a rabbit!”

You might debate whether mixing outrageous fantasy with paleontology is the best way to teach kids about prehistory, but the concept demonstrates its own value in Dinos That Drive. Engaging even young children in a discussion about fact and fiction will drive their curiosity. Dinosaurs already have a special status in the worldview of kids.  They lived a long, long time ago, but have connections to some species today. The extinction event that ended their reign was dramatic, and knowledge about these “terrible lizards” is continually evolving.  Readers already know that; Dinos That Drive is an excursion that, nevertheless, sticks to the right path.