Dinotopia: First Flight

From School Library Journal Grade 3-6-Brightly colored, exquisitely detailed prehistoric creatures brimming with personality square off against menacing-looking mechanical monsters in this luxuriantly illustrated-but lamely plotted-prequel to Dinotopia: A Land Apart from Time (Turner, 1992; o.p.) and its spin-offs. Having replaced all of its animals with massive, iron-gray robots, the Empire of Poseidos mounts an attack on Highnest, home of Dinotopia's pterosaurs. Luckily, young Poseidonian orphan Gideon Altaire, along with (taking a cue from the Disney bible) a gaggle of cute, squabbling nonhuman sidekicks, arrives to save the day. Children will be drawn to the flashy, dramatic paintings, but are likely to skip the text-especially since isolated lines printed in larger, differently colored type serve as captions to each scene. A fold-out game board with perforated sheets of character and action cards makes this problematic for libraries, even without the trite story line. Alan Dean Foster's full-length "Dinotopia" novels (HarperCollins) have more to offer. John Peters, New York Public Library Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. James Gurney's fantasy art has appeared on the covers of more than 70 books, and his art appears regularly in National Geographic . He is the author and illustrator of Dinotopia: A Land Apart from Time, Dinotopia: The World Beneath, and is currently working on his third Dinotopia book, which will be published in Fall 2000. He lives in the Hudson Valley of New York State with his family.