How to Tame a Triceratops

April 24, 2017
Dinosaurs take the place of horses in Dare’s zippy first story in the Dino Riders series, a kind of Wild West/Jurassic mashup. Josh Sanders is an ambitious young dino rider in the land of the Lost Plains, who hopes to enter the Founders’ Day Race, but his gallimimus, Plodder, is old and slow. When Josh acquires a triceratops, however, the puppylike dinosaur isn’t race ready either. Epelbaum’s cinematic, grayscale artwork plays up the rowdiness of the premise of an adventure laced with cowpoke lingo and stuffed with dinosaurs both speedy and slow. Simultaneously available: How to Rope a Gigantosaurus. Ages 7–10.

February 1, 2017
Young Josh needs to up his ride if he's going to win the Trihorn settlement's 100th-anniversary Founders' Day race and meet his hero, Terrordactyl Bill.Set on the Lost Plains, where ranchers tend to herds of iguanodons, and horses (if there were any) would be easy pickings for the local predators, this series kickoff pits a brash lad and sidekick and schoolmates Sam and Abi against not only the requisite bully, but such fiercer adversaries as attacking pterodactyls. Josh's first challenge after eagerly entering the race is finding a faster, nimbler steed than his steady but old gallimimus, Plodder. Along comes Charge--an aptly named, if not-quite-fully-trained triceratops with speed, brains, and, it turns out, a streak of loyalty that saves Josh's bacon both here and in a simultaneously publishing sequel, How To Rope a Giganotosaurus, which prominently features T. Rex's much larger cousin. Dare adds a map, as well as spot illustrations of rural Western types (Josh and Abi are white, Sam has dark skin and tightly curled hair) astride toothy, brightly patterned dinos. In both adventures Josh weathers regular encounters with dinosaur dung, snot, and gas as well as threats to life and limb to show up the aforementioned bully and emerge a hero. Adventures and misadventures, Old West style--but with dinos. (Fantasy. 8-10)

COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.