The Last Synapsid

by Timothy Mason

Faith, Colorado, doesn't get many visitors. But this spring, a mysterious creature is lurking on the mountain. Fiercer than a mountain lion, it’s been hunting pets and leaving their remains scattered over the mountainside. But what is it, and what does it want? Only Rob and his best friend, Phoebe, are brave enough to investigate.

What they find on the mountain is the Last Synapsid—a squat, drooly creature that looks like a dinosaur crossed with a wienerdog—that claims to need Rob and Phoebe’s help. Having wandered into a time snag from his own era, 30 million years before the dinosaurs, “Sid” is chasing a violent carnivore called a gorgonopsid. The Gorgon has become fascinated by humanity and refuses to return to his proper place in time. But if he doesn’t, history will re-align, humans will never evolve, and Rob and Phoebe will end up as nothing more than characters in an elderly synapsid’s dream.

Timothy Mason is a playwright who wrote the book and lyrics for the Broadway musical version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas! He lives in New York. The Last Synapsid is his first novel.


From the Hardcover edition.

Genres: Time Travel, Middle Grade, Fiction

320 pages, Library Binding

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Tim Mason is a playwright whose work has been produced in New York City, throughout the United States, and around the world. Among the awards he has received are a Kennedy Center Award, the Hollywood Drama-Logue Award, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and a Rockefeller Foundation grant. In addition to his dramatic plays, he wrote the book for Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas! The Musical, which had two seasons on Broadway and tours nationally every year. He is the author of the young adult novel The Last Synapsid. The Darwin Affair was his first adult novel.

source: Amazon

Reviews

[Bethany]

Parts of this book are excellent (the opening line), and parts of it fall flat (the didactic environemtnal messages that read like interpolation). The premise is more complicated than most adventure books: two English-speaking prehistoric creatures from before the dinosaurs time-travel and land in a dying Colorado mining town. Two 12-year-olds encounter the two creatures and must fight to keep both alive despite the villainous efforts of a mysterious outisder. Only by returning the two creatures to their own time can the pre-teens save the world as they know it.

Surprisingly, the time travel is the most believable and convincingly written aspect of the novel. The children's own time-hopping adventures don't impact their world because it's built on the premise that time travel happened.

I had never heard of synapsids; we learned about dinosaurs in school, but never the precursors of mammals. An interesting lesson in prehistory, if nothing else!

[Angela]

From the cover, I expected a twee little story about a puppy-sized dinosaur and the children who befriend him. That would have been fine.

Instead, what I read was an adventuresome, compelling, surprising tale about two tweens who befriend a small synapsid (which isn't a dinosaur at all) and learn they must help him save the fate of the human race.

I don't want to say much about the plot, other than there are some dark elements, which I love finding in a children's novel, there are some great lines (I bugged my husband by reading them aloud), and there are a few brilliant and indisputable dismissals of creationism. I cheered when I read them. Hooray for science, especially from a book that takes a few liberties with it.

[Cat.]

This is a kids' book that is set in a mountain area VERY similar to Ouray, Colorado: one of my favorite places on Earth. It's a time-travel, historic fiction, "green" fantasy that somehow works. Basically, a fore-runner of all mammals has gotten lost in time and decided he likes our time better than his own. But, if he doesn't go back to his own, all mammalian life on Earth will never happen. Another 'synapsid' (these dinosaur-like critters) has also started to time-travel in order to make the other one come back and do its job to evolve into humans.

Not a bad story, for the average 10-year-old. ;-)

[Dave]

An adventure you can sink your teeth into no matter what age you are. The Last Synapsid is a fun, quick read with pretty strong and interesting characters.

[Faith]

This book was good at first but throughout the rest of the book it was very hard to keep up with. I also found that their where a lot of plot holes so that made it even harder to read. It kept going from formal to no formal writing. By the end of this book I wanted to just burn it and I was crying because of how horrible this book is, but I couldn’t because I was reading it for a school project. Don’t read this book it is absolutely horrible.

[Alan Wilcox]

This is a real page turner lots of action, adventure and suspense but a little too much blood, melodrama, profanity and too many humans. The best part about reading this book is that instead of dinosaurs it prioritizes and puts more emphasis on prehistoric creatures from the Permian period before the dinosaurs.

[Elizabeth]

Mason, Timothy THE LAST SYNAPSID R 6+

This compelling novel gives a vivid portrait of a human community while also imparting a profound sense of the Earth’s long, pre-human history (probably not recommended for strict Creationists). Best friends Rob and Phoebe live in a small, former mining town in Colorado. Lately their closeness has been strained by the stresses of pre-adolescence, and matters get worse when they meet two time-traveling, English-speaking synapsids, proto-mammals from the earth’s Permian Period, 250 million years ago. One of the creatures, the Gorgon, is terrorizing the town, eating pets and horses, and he refuses to return to the Permian Period. The other, Sid, becomes their friend and enlists them in a quest to return the Gorgon to his rightful place in time, thereby assuring the existence of all humankind. Along the way, Rob and Phoebe must deal with misunderstanding and suspicion from their whole community as well as a sinister stranger who is using the Gorgon to satisfy his own greed. With deft humor, the author mixes grand themes with the everyday worries of 7th graders. Added bonus: Shakespeare’s Tempest is cleverly woven into the story’s climactic scenes.

[Alexis Neal]

An excerpt of my review for Children's Books and Reviews:

If you thought that 8-year-olds were too young for Shakespeare, think again! Excerpts from The Tempest are sprinkled all throughout the climax of the book. Rob and Phoebe face off against the Gorgon during a community production of the Shakespearean play, which the Gorgon, in all his travels, has learned by heart. The Gorgon sees himself as Caliban, manipulated and mistreated by the selfish Jenkins, his Prospero. Indeed, it is his love for Shakespeare that tempts him to stay in the present day, and his love of Shakespeare contributes to his decision to return home (so that humans—including Shakespeare—will one day exist). This is an extremely appealing introduction to the Bard, particularly for young men: Shakespeare is not just long words and romance and tragedy—it has monsters! And (pre)dinosaurs love it! While this book is no guarantee that young readers will develop a taste for Renaissance plays, it should at least whet a few appetites.

For full review, see "Shakespeare for Children: The Last Synapsid, by Timothy Mason," at Children's Books and Reviews.

[Nancy J.]

I liked the premise of the book, and thought from the cover and beginning that it would be great for 8 to 12-year olds, as advertised, but it quickly became darker and much more complicated. I was a little disappointed in the didactic environemtnal messages that overwhelmed the storyline at times. When English-speaking prehistoric creatures time-travel into a dying Colorado mining town, 12-year-olds with pre-teen issues are drawn into saving the creatures by returning them to their time and thus save the world as they know it. The adventure becomes part time-travel, part murder mystery, and part pre-historic science lesson. Middle schoolers should love it if they are not thrown off by the more juvenile cover.

[Cindy]

I really wanted to like the book as it started out really strong for myself but it didn't keep the pace. I found the parents to be a little out there and some of the stuff they did like never listening to the kids and such a little out of character.

The two kids didn't seem to gel to me, not because I'm an adult they just rubbed me the wrong way. And the fact that every twist and turn in this book got the plot more and more complicated didn't help.

When they added the time travel element I knew that was it for me just one too many elements that made the book seem a little disjointed to myself.

[Lynda]

An unusual story about some pre-cursors to humans from way back before the dinosaur. They travel to our era to save themselves, hence, humans from destruction. An interesting - for younger children - first read that involves science and dinosaurs that might make children excited to read. It was OK.

[Holly]

Feb 10, 2009

[Funnyone~alexa~scpa]

i just started reading the book today! ill keep u updated:)

[Martha]

The Last Synapsid offers that wonderful mix of reality, time travel, mystery, and young-teen conflict. A must-read.

[Tonya]

easy reading for me but a lovely book. Well written and a whirlwind tour of evolution which was great :)

[William Brooks]

"Another one of those feel good tales that will stick with you,"

[Anna]

It was alright.. couldn't get myself to read past the 50th page though