The Greatest Dinosaur Ever by Brenda Z. Guiberson (review)

A dozen dino contenders vie for the honor of “the greatest dinosaur that ever lived,” and each is allowed only a few lines in which to make his or her case. You can predict that much of the boasting will come from the usual suspects—Tyrannosaurus rex, with its long teeth and ability to crush through massive amounts of meat; Stegosaurus, with its lethally spiked tail; Ankylosaurus, with its body armor and club tail. Others make a convincing case—Troodon’s eyesight and intelligence, Leaellynasaura’s super night vision, and Oviraptor’s parenting skills might, in the long run, argue for greater acclaim than the brute force of their rivals. While status wrangling is the ostensible focus here, the real pleasure is in perusing Spirin’s full-bleed full-spread oil paintings, which bring an unusual beauty to a genre more notable for gory scenes of predation. Spirin’s pictures are intricately detailed, subtle in hue, and textured to resemble the finely crackled varnish of the Old Masters. A closing spread offers thumbnail portraits of the featured dinosaurs along with fast facts of name meaning, size, period, and location not explicitly covered in the main text. Pronunciations are also included, which will be mighty handy when arguing the relative merits of Therizinosaurus and Leaellynasaura. Whew.