By Carla Mae Jansen, Illustrated by Natasha Kostovska
Turtle Trails Publishing, 2022
Picture Book, 38 Pages, ages 2-10
That day when an ancient dinosaur, a ceratosaurus, ruined a tea-party in a treehouse in 2022 and a food fight ensued.
Mike Rowe would be mighty proud of this series of books. In a Six Degrees way this author explains the entire water cycle from millions of years ago to present day that ends in a monumental food fight between friends.
Tea parties, dinosaurs, skinks in miners caps, and a food fight.
How is this even possible you may ask? Well, a little drop of water, splashed by the terrifying dinosaur rolled into the sea, hit the currents and is off on an adventure lasting centuries. It swam past seaweed and plesiosaurs, then it evaporated into the air, rose to mountaintops and was condensed to liquid in a cloud, snowed down on a glacier and stayed frozen for thousands of years. When the drop finally melts to liquid once more it soaks in the ground and is squished through a pore, hits a big aquifer and is pumped by a well. Suffice to say it ends up as an ice-cube dropped on the floor and the festivities get nothing but messy from there.
Without even knowing it kids are learning about science topics like aquifers and wells, condensation, evaporation, precipitation and more. The dinosaurs placed in the different era’s are done with careful research, and a skink guides you through the story, even being frozen in the glacier and escaping into the ground when a saber-toothed tiger is after him. The creatures are labeled in the back of the book, the water cycle is illustrated by the skink, and the rhyming is very entertaining.
Carla Mae Jansen is a former high school science teacher and I have to say, without a doubt, that had she been my science teacher I probably would have had a much greater interest in the science world at a younger age. The artwork is rather whacky, bright and colorful, but when you consider the story it fits well. This book is perfect for classroom teachers, a bonus for homeschoolers, and perfect for dinosaur and prehistoric creature enthusiasts of all ages. With a knack for what seems like effortless teaching this book isn’t to be missed and neither is the skink in the miners cap!
A Dinosaur Made Me Spill: A Water Cycle Adventure by Carla Mae Jansen gets 5 stars from this reviewer.