What the Dinosaurs Did Last Night

What the Dinosaurs Did Last Night
by Refe and Susan Tuma

Strange things are happening all over the world. By night, plastic dinosaurs are creeping out of their toy boxes, shaking off their polite demeanors, and getting up to mischief.

No one knows how long this has been going on, but in 2012 Refe and Susan Tuma first noticed and started documenting online the shenanigans that their herd of plastic dinos were getting up to. By the autumn of 2013, reports were coming in from all over the world. Dinovember had arrived and cheeky plastic dinos were taking the world by storm.

By the 2014 launch of Refe and Susan Tuma's What the Dinosaurs Did Last Night, children all over the world were waking up each day in November to see what mischief had been wrought during the night. Facebook feeds and Pinterest boards were deluged with dinotastic destruction. One couldn't go on social media without seeing a T. rex stealing Halloween candy, a diplodicus devastating a birthday cake, or a triceratops tangled up in toilet paper, all aggregated under the tag #Dinovember.

What the Dinosaurs Did Last Night is an excellent way to bring a bit of wonder, mystery, and joy to your child during the late autumn. This book will give you lots of inspiration for what your herd of naughty raptors can get up to next November.

What the Dinosaurs Did Last Night
by Refe and Susan Tuma

You Are Stardust

You Are Stardust
by Elin Kelsey, illustrated by Soyeon Kim


Every atom in your body heavier than hydrogen was forged in the heart of a dying star. When you cast your eyes upwards to the sky, you see the refineries of the building blocks of life. We humans, we earthlings, are a part of nature and a continuous part of the vast universe that we inhabit. We are the way that that incomprehensibly large universe reflects upon itself.

I first encountered the poetic beauty of these ideas when I read Carl Sagan in college. As a parent, I've tried to explain these big ideas to my son. I'm pleased that Elin Kelsey and Soyeon Kim have given me a tool to help explain these concepts to my son in their magnificent You Are Stardust.

Elin Kelsey's elegant yet simple prose ("The water swirling in your glass once filled the puddles where dinosaurs drank.") is well matched with Soyeon Kim's beautiful and elaborately constructed collages. You Are Stardust is aesthetically and intellectually rewarding - it is a joy to read and is sure to inspire deep questions from the little one in your life.

You Are Stardust
by Elin Kelsey, illustrated by Soyeon Kim

If You Hopped Like A Frog

If You Hopped Like A Frog

by David M. Schwartz, illustrated by James Warhola

Your child is probably always asking what, why, and how. Want to wow your kid with amazing animal facts?

David M. Schwartz was just that kind of inquisitive kid - and it turns out that he grew up to be an inquisitive adult and a children's author. In his excellent If You Hopped Like A Frog, hilariously illustrated by Mad Magazine alum (and nephew of Andy Warhol) James Warhola, you will find out just how tiny your brain would be, if it were scaled to the relative size of a brachiosaurus, just how much you could shove in your mouth if you ate like a snake, and just how high you could jump if you had the legs of a flea.

This book is sure to fill your child with absurd anecdotes and a healthy sense of wonder at the world. I highly recommend it.

If You Hopped Like A Frog, by David M. Schwartz, illustrated by James Warhola