Picture Books: Y is for Jolly Jane Yolen

Jane Yolen will likely come up again when I tackle the next A-Z list, Books Based on Fairy Tales. 

This time around, I concentrated on her non-fantasy/non-fairy tales (technically).

She has a series of books with illustrator Mark Teague, How Do Dinosaurs...

They fall into the Bernstein Bears genre. Dinosaurs get mad, learn to share, memorize colors and numbers, go to school, celebrate holidays...

They are completely amusing. Like any good children's series, the books spend more time on the set-up than the pay-off.

For instance, in How Do Dinosaurs Show Good Manners, the text lists all the ways dinosaurs can misbehave, including, "Does she yell and toss books off the library shelf/then grab all the dinosaur books for herself?" 

"No, dinosaurs don't," the text informs us primly. But the primness is completely undermined by pictures of very large reptiles showing people the door and vacuuming. 

It's like Victorian tales for Good Children told with a serious purpose and...

The tongue planted firmly in the cheek.   

The picture with the appalled-looking cat comes from How Do Dinosaurs Say I'm Mad?  

They shouldn't throw things at the cat! (Or slap people.)