Reviewed by
Dianne Bates
A cheese
sandwich is crucial to this story. It is what Frankie has for lunch the day she’s
in the museum of natural science and what she feeds – despite the ‘don’t feed
the fossil’ sign --- to a dinosaur skeleton which she sees on display. Frankie
knows ‘everything’ about dinosaurs: she ‘could tell you the height of a
Hadrosaurus, the length of a Leptoceratops and how to spot a Stegosaurus.’ What
she doesn’t know is that the dinosaur she’s fed follows her and her mother home
from the museum.
That night,
unable to sleep, Frankie tries naming dinosaurs alphabetically. When she comes
to a Diplodocus, she sees a giant head on a long neck peering at her through her
bedroom window. Frankie thinks it’s a dream, but in the morning, she finds the same
dinosaur outside her house snoozing in the sunlight. She makes her new friend
some toast, of which it eats ‘every last crumb.’ The two play together, but
next day a palaeontologist from the museum turns up to take the dinosaur to its
rightful place.
Of course,
life is lonely without her friend, but Frankie thinks of a brilliant idea – and
she follows through with it, which is how this engaging picture book story ends.
No doubt any
small child who loves dinosaurs will love this book, which is filled with
full-sized illustrations, many of which are set inside the museum. The last
double-page spread is particularly worth examining – one feels as though one is
literally inside the museum, looking at the exhibits, which include a woolly
mammoth and Frankie’s Diplodocus. To further interest the young reader there is
a double page spread of over 20 dinosaurs in, what the label says, is ‘Frankie’s
Prehistoric Sandwich Guide’ and which are arranged alphabetically.
This book is
sure to win many fans.
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