Tadpole Rex

I always look forward to seeing Mr. Cyrus' artwork and this book is no different. As for flabby prose, I think not. He manages to rhyme some difficult words while still getting a message across about science as well as the state of our planet. Huzzah Mr. Cyrus!

I had no desire to read this, despite all its accolades. I knew it'd gotten rave reviews, but feh, I'm not into dinos or amphibians. When my 4-year-old picked it out at the library, I sighed, expecting a slog...but WOW. The jumpy, unpredictable rhyme scheme is froggy and delightful -- I couldn't disagree more with the reviewer who says it's flabby; it's quite sophisticated AND kid-friendly! And the plot is so thoughtful -- it takes a few reads to get all the nuances. Maxine even likes to hear the author's afternote, explaining that tadpoles figuratively do have an inner tyrannosaurus because they start off as water-bound plant-eaters and turn into land-friendly meat-eaters. It's a great science intro for very little kids -- it facilitates discussion. And the oversized, bold art really is beautiful. Leap on Tadpole Rex!

The sizes and colors of the pictures along with the rhythm of the rhyming kept my grandson enthralled at each turn of the page. I am very happy with his reaction to this book.

The whole family loves this book. My three-year old has memorized, so we are always battling over who gets to read it out loud. Great rhyme and illustrations. A dinosaur lovers must have.

Rhyming's not easy. It's not everyone in the world that can pull it off either. In fact, there have been so many picture books that rhyme and rhyme poorly that it has infected me. Now whenever I pick up a picture book and find the bouncy bouncy text, I instinctively cringe. I initially did this with this book too. On paper, "Tadpole Rex" doesn't sound like much. "Okay, so, it's about a frog and it lives, like, during the time of dinosaurs, right? And... uh... oh, it rhymes and the colors are done on the computer and there's this thing in the back that talks about how we're hurting the environment." Yeah, that sounds awful . . . if you haven't read it. As it turns out, Kurt Cyrus's story of a frog plumbing personal depths to tap into its own inner dinosaur is a smart, fun, ultimately realistic book filled with facts and a rhyme scheme that not only works but begs to be read aloud. For parents desperate for a dinosaur story that diverges away from the standard reptilian fare, "Tadpole Rex" is bound to be beloved. When a huge Tyrannosaurus Rex stomps his way through a muddy swamp and leaves its footprints behind, the huge puddle is just the place for a little polliwog to begin to mature. Of course, as safe as a puddle sounds there are always threats to a polliwog's life, but by camouflaging itself in the mud it manages to survive long enough to grow to maturity. When legs and arms pop out, the inner dinosaur in Tadpole Rex comes out with an almighty, "Ribbet!". He hops past the mighty dinos, at last resting in a puddle where he can watch them unobserved. But today, "Gone are the dinosaurs, swept away / But hoppers and croakers are here to stay." The big guys have disappeared one way or another but frogs are omnipresent. "And somewhere inside / deep in their core / they all have an inner / tyrannosaur." A Note from the Author at the back of the book explains that frogs predate the dinosaurs by at least 100 million years and will hopefully, with care, continue to be around in the future. As I've mentioned before, if you're going to rhyme then you better do it right. And Cyrus, for all that his pictures could be enough if he wanted them to be, does it right. "Stomp! went the dinosaur. Squish! went the goop. / Up came the bubbles - / Bloop. / Bloop. / Bloop." They scan, they work within the context of the story, and they sound lovely when tripped off one's tongue. The rule of thumb regarding rhyming picture books is whether or not the book would be better off if the story was NOT in rhyme. For example, if we could hear the story of Tadpole Rex told in a straightforward matter-of-fact manner, would it make for a better book? Survey says no. I'm sure you could do it if you wanted to, but the lure of this story is that this frog, from a tadpole onward, acts as if he has a dinosaur inside of him. "For somewhere inside him, deep in his core, / there slumbered an inner tyrannosaur." In his note at the back Cyrus mentions that whe