Up for review today is a cute little story by Lisa Garyfalos, Millie Meets the Dinosaurs: The Natural History Museum
Millie is a precocious little girl who is worried about what might happen on her trip to the dinosaurs at Natural History Museum in London. She knows dinosaurs are big and can be very dangerous. Fortunately her mother and sister are there to distract her from her feas and explain things as they go….but, every now and then, there just might be a dinosaur or two following her.
This story is based on the authors own daughters and is a cute premise for a child’s story that would be easy to read aloud to children.
I enjoyed this simple story, and for the most part I enjoyed the simple illustrations as well, with a few exceptions where as a graphic artist I’d like to make just a few suggestions that shouldn’t take away from this childlike type of illustration. It’s great to have childlike illustration…but look for small details to be complete, because if they aren’t complete they stick out.
For example, there’s a page where Millie is looking at a dinosaur who is in an exhibit….but the enclosure is inconsistent. If you look at the legs of the dinosaur….some are inside of the enclosure….some are out. It’s small details like that you have to pay attention to with illustrations. Also, be careful not to overwhelm an illustration by making it way too busy, such as when Millie’s sister has her little accident. Too much going on can take away from what you are trying to say in the story.
Aside from that also be careful that there is proper capitalization in the book title too, this is a first impression issue. In this case the title should read…Millie Meets the Dinosaurs: The Natural History Museum. There are standards to this that can be looked up to help avoid this pitfall.
The issues I bring up though are small ones and pretty simple to fix.
Still, this could be a fun story to bring up on your e reader and read to your child and then, ask them what they think of it as well when asking them to answer the questions in the back.
This is a good effort that needs just a little bit of work to get it to that 4 star rating.
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