In Except Antarctica, Todd Sturgell introduced a turtle and other critters who razz an unseen narrator who's simply trying to share some animal tidbits. Sturgell is at it again in Dinosaurs in Space, in which the picture book's narrator-versus-dinosaurs meta badinage is just as funny, and the content just as educational, although happily, not in a way that young readers will necessarily notice.
In response to almost every one of the narrator's dino facts, the dino peanut gallery is there with daffy all-caps commentary (e.g., "I'M GOING TO THE NEXT PAGE. I LOVE DINOSAUR BOOKS!"). Their interruptions and disregard for chronology come to annoy the narrator ("Why don't you go back to the Late Cretaceous, where you belong?"), who at least shows some sensitivity ("Sorry") while on the topic of dino extinction. When the narrator describes the "great big BOOM," which "threw lots of stuff from Earth into space," the dinos hear what they want to: "DINOSAURS IN SPACE?!" (Narrator: "That's not at all what I'm saying! Only pieces of the dinosaurs ended up in space.") From here things only get more absurd, which is to say even better.
Sturgell's digitally tweaked pen-and-ink art serves the dinos' active imaginations; one image finds them floating around in space in their fantasy astronaut gear. The art stops just short of cartoonishness, although it's not hard to picture the bulbous-eyed, earth-and-flower-colored dino cast getting the animation treatment. Dinosaurs in Space concludes with a fireworks display's worth of facts, which the dinos are on hand to help illustrate, camera-ready as ever. --Nell Beram, freelance writer and YA author