Linus The Vegetarian T. Rex
Written and Illustrated by Robert Neubecker
Beach Lane Books, 2013
Hardcover, $16.99
Ruth Ann MacKenzie, a young member of the Museum of Natural History, loves to hang out with her friends--the Dinosaurs. Her surprise comes when she visits the museum's new exhibit Cretaceous Surprises.
There she meets a giant Tyrannosaurus rex named Linus who assures her that she won't be his lunch because he is a vegetarian. He does take her on a friendly journey of discovery to show her what he eats--just plants and lots of them. On their journey they encounter other dinosaurs, but he doesn't eat them, even though he's a predator.
Linus does prove his fierceness by opening his mouth wide and emitting a series of very loud roars to scare off two velociraptors menacing both of them. Ruth Ann exclaims, "You're my hero, Linus!"
"I'm just me-a very big, very brave, very VEGETARIAN Tyrannosaurus rex!" he tells her. The two new friends part when she steps through the curtain and back into the museum.
Linus The Vegetarian T. Rex tells pre-school children that large creatures can thrive on a plant-food diet. Ruth Ann is quite content to share Linus' lifestyle. Author/artist Neubecker's cartoon-like colored India-ink drawings to depict Linus and Ruth Ann will surely evoke smiles from readers. Young children find dinosaurs very intriguing and will be entranced by this story that has a dinosaur as one of its principal characters. Besides, some dinosaurs actually were vegetarians.
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