Dinosaur School

by Dick King-Smith, Tim Warnes (Illustrator)

Basil Brontosaurus is teased at playschool by all the other little dinosaurs, who call him stupid. His mother tells him he's special because he has two brains - one in his head and one is his back. Basil is so pleased that he starts to throw his weight around at playschool. That is, until he meets a large Tyrannosaurus rex!

Genres: Childrens

32 pages, Paperback

First published September 26, 2002

About the author

Dick King-Smith was born and raised in Gloucestershire, England, surrounded by pet animals. After twenty years as a farmer, he turned to teaching and then to writing children's books.

Dick writes mostly about animals: farmyard fantasy, as he likes to call it, often about pigs, his special favorites. He enjoys writing for children, meeting the children who read his books, and knowing that they get enjoyment from what he does.

Among his well-loved books is Babe, The Gallant Pig, which was recently made into a major motion picture, and was nominated for an Academy Award.

Dick lived with his wife in a small 17th-century cottage, about three miles from the house where he was born.

Reviews

[Jemma · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read this with my four year old and what a load of nonsense. The daddy dinosaur was a walking stereotype of the useless father without two brain cells to rub together and when Basil is upset because he’s being bullied the mother tells him to “stop this cry-baby nonsense” which is ridiculous.

I will say though, that the illustrations by Tim Warnes are lovely and that the two stars are for his art alone.

[Aoife Fitzpatrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

This story is about Basil the Brontosaurus that finds it difficult to settle into playschool because the other dinosaurs make fun of him and call him stupid. To try and help, his mother takes him aside and tells him a special secret between Brontosaurus’. She tells him that they have two brains, one in their head and one in the middle of their backs. This gave Basil extra confidence but it might have given him a little bit too much confidence as he thought that he was twice as clever and twice as big as the other dinosaurs in the playschool. He gets expelled from his playschool because of his arrogance. However, one day when Basil went for a walk he met a baby Tyrannosaurus Rex, Basil wasn’t scared until the dinosaur’s’ Daddy came out and nearly ate him for a snack. He ran back to his parents and promised he would not be so “cocky” again. He learnt an important lesson about being more humble.

This is a lovely little story about dinosaurs for the developing readers to become more confident readers. The combination of clear illustrations, relatively easy words and sentences make it a useful addition to a school library.

This book would be useful for individual or group reading, as part of homework exercises or fun reading time in school.