I’m Bad!

Glaring straight at you from the cover and from the first double-page spread is a big, bad, gleaming blue and green Tyrannosaurus Rex, with fearsome claws and huge white choppers, exuding a light blue stream of bad breath. "Are you BAD?" he growls ferociously. The first time I shared this brash picture book with a large group of kindergartners and first graders, I read that line aloud in a gravelly dinosaur voice. As one, they instantly snarled back, "YEAH!" (Ever since that Pigeon character asked us if he could drive that bus, kids have found it perfectly natural to talk back to books.) I didn't anticipate their quick response, and it cracked me up. Stay in character, I admonished myself.

"I'm REALLY bad. Scare-the-tails-off-all-the-other-dinosaurs BAD," continues the biggest, baddest reptile of all. His big empty belly is growling for GRUB. "Watch me catch some TWEETS," he commands. What follows is a wild rumpus and chase scene across the colorful prehistoric landscape as the mega-reptile lunges, without success, after birds and smaller dinosaurs. "I NEED CHOW RIGHT NOWOWOWOWOWOW . . .," he howls, throwing himself on the ground in a tantrum worthy of any little child.

Themes : BEHAVIOR. DINOSAURS. FOOD. MOTHERS.