Children’s Literature Evaluation Form

Your Name: Sequoia Lansky

Book Title: Boy, Were We Wrong about Dinosaurs!
Author: Kathleen Kudlinski
Genre: Children’s literature
Illustrator: S.D. Schindler Dutton
Publisher/Year: Scholastic. 2005
Evaluate the Book for the following elements
Style and Language: Using examples for the book, explain the following: Word
choices, dialogue, rhythm, rhyme and sentence length. Share unexpected insights or
interesting information the reader learns from this story. (5 points)
Word choice is lengthy for a young child but would be perfect for a student in the
second grade. The dialogue explains a lot to the reader and allows for them to learn
information.

Character: With examples from the book, provide the following- (5 points)
Who is the main character?
How can the reader relate to the character?
Who are the supporting characters?

The main characters are the people who originally came across dinosaur remains and
studied them.
The reader relates to the character because as a young child, you are always able to
explore and find new things outdoors.
The supporting characters are the children in the book.

Plot: Summarize the major events of the story (6 points)

The ancient Chinese decided that dinosaur bones came from dragons.
Setting: Explain the place and time of this book. (2 points)
Theme: What is the main message of this book? (2 points)
The setting takes place outdoors, in the past.
The main message of this book is to inform the reader that dinosaur bones could
have come from anywhere and we are still learning about dinosaur existence today.

Illustration: Analyze the book you selected with the following categories
Style (realism, surrealism, expressionism, impressionism, naïve, cartoon art)? (2
points)

Representational
Media Choice (paints, oils watercolors, pencils, pen, charcoal, crayons, acrylic, chalk):
(2 points)

Painterly media (paint)

Give examples of describe how the following visual elements are used in the
illustrations: (3)
Line: There are many curved lines throughout the book, representing movement
Shapes: There are triangles on one of the pages of the book. We are to assume that
these represent fire.
Color: Warm hue, as there are a lot of orange and red throughout
Texture: Collage, as the pictures have three-dimensional qualities
Page design (placement of the illustrations, use of borders, white and dark space and
all pages the same or different). (3)

The illustrations represent the majority of the page. There are no borders used in
this book and the pages all flow well.

Child Development Theory: Choose either Piaget, Erickson or Social Emotional to

describe the connection to the book Chose 1 only (5 points)
Piaget:
Name the stage Concrete Operational and the age 7-12 years
Explain the cognitive development from this stage and provide an example from the
book to support your choice: The reader is engaged through the world where he or
she can find new things while exploring outdoors. This is what happened in the book
as well.

1 would not recommend 2 average 3 highly recommended

Your rating of the book: 3

Why? I would recommend this book for a student in the second grade, as the child
would be able to understand that we are still learning about things in this world that
were discovered a long time ago.