I think there must be a bit of thing going on for dinosaurs at the moment as I seem to have been sent loads of books with them in to review. Little Miss C and I certainly aren't complaining though – we love a good dinosaur tale.
The first one we're reviewing is There's a Dinosaur in My Bathtub. Just the title of this one made LMC laugh out loud. This particular dinosaur is French, has a very slick moustache and calls himself Pierre – obviously. Pierre has come to live in Amelia's bathtub and he's so good at hiding that only Amelia has seen him. Together the two of them have some amazing adventures – not only do they go to sea together, but they also take a trip to the moon. But as everyone knows French dinosaurs only stay in people's bathtubs for the summer. Then they vanish.
This really is a lovely tale about a little girl's imaginary friend and it prompted a lovely conversation with LMC about imaginary friends, cuddly toy friends and real friends. It seemed she needed a little bit of reassurance that it was OK to have pretend friends and to tell people about them, but to me all that is a lovely part of growing up. She loved all the illustrations in the book and was very excited about the fact that it was a dinosaur not a crocodile in the bath (as she thought Pierre looked a bit crocodile like) as "a crocodile might eat people up, but dinosaurs don't eat people because they are friendly".
As a grown up reading this book with a child I really enjoyed it too. The little things like the dinosaur being French and his moustache really made me smile, even if they did pass straight over LMC's head! I also like the fact that the initial idea for the story came from a little boy one day whispering in the author's ear very secretively "I have a VERY big dinosaur hidden in my bathtub!" Children's imaginations really are wonderful.
Little Miss C's summary: "It's a very funny book about a friendly, nice dinosaur. I like this book. I don't want it to go away for ever."
There's a Dinosaur in my Bathtub by Cataline Echeverri is published by Bloomsbury on 13th February 2014 and the paperback is priced at £6.99
Disclaimer: We were sent a copy of There's a Dinosaur in my Bathtub for the purposes of this review. This post contains affiliate links.
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