Friday, February 5, 2016

Spotlight Friday - The Dino Files: A Mysterious Egg 2.05.16


Time to get ready for the weekend!
Kick up your feet and find a good place to read.
Sharing #booklove for your classroom or library.
Spotlighting a book or two because these books deserve the spotlight!


I love finding new transitional chapter book series!  Finding fun literature to share with readers who are ready for chapters, but not ready for longer, middle grade novels, can be difficult.  I'm glad that more and more authors are writing for this age and writing books that are engaging and fun to read.  That's one thing about young readers.  You can't fool them.  Give them a book that is readable but not interesting?  They aren't going to stick with it.  

Product Details

The Dino Files: A Mysterious Egg
written by Stacy McAnulty
illustrated by Mike Boldt
published by Random House

In The Dino Files we meet Frank who is staying with his grandparents this summer at DECoW, the Dinosaur Education Center of Wyoming, which his grandparents own.  Fortunately, he gets to help out, but only if he stays out of the sun.  Unfortunately his cousin, Samantha, is also staying there.

In this first book of the series, Frank's Gram finds what appears to be a dinosaur egg fossil.  They found it on their neighbor's property, but they have an agreement worked out that they can do some digs on their land as long as the neighbor's cattle can graze on some of their land.  Savvy readers will know that these kind of agreements never work out.  Especially when Frank's nemesis is the neighbor's son.  

But surprise, the dinosaur egg fossil ends up not being quite so fossilized.  Soon after the discovery, a little dinosaur hatches!  Frank and Samantha try to keep it undercover but pretty much all readers know how that will turn out... it's never good!

Author Stacy McAnulty has the start of a fun new series with The Dino Files.  I think it will be a hit with mature 1st grade readers through 3rd graders.  With the addition of Mike Boldt's illustrations (I Don't Want to be a Frog and the upcoming A Tiger Tail), this series will be a great addition to the classroom or library.  The second book in the series, Too Big to Hide, releases May 3, with the third book, It's Not a Dinosaur, releasing October 11th.

Pair with Franco's "Dino Mike" series:
Dino-Mike and the T. Rex Attack (Dino-Mike)   

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