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Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Barnum in The New York Times

Barnum got a wonderful review in The New York Times.  Here's the review, written by Pamela Paul and published May 23, 2012:

I Found a T. Rex!

‘Barnum’s Bones,’ by Tracey Fern

As a child, Barnum Brown collected fossils — so many that when he filled the front parlor with boxes of them, his mother moved them out to the laundry house. Like so many young boys, Brown became obsessed with dinosaurs. But unlike other boys, he grew up to become one of the nation’s foremost paleontologists and, among other things, discovered the first fossil of Tyrannosaurus rex. 

Tracey Fern (“Buffalo Music,” “Pippo the Fool”) turns a slice of a scientist’s biography into an American adventure tale, describing how Brown and his rivals at other museums raced to find the best fossils and to discover new species. The moment when Brown unearths the first bones belonging to a T. rex is genuinely exciting, though on the next page we learn he couldn’t make it back to the digging site in the badlands of Montana until a few seasons later. How could he be “too busy”?! Fern doesn’t explain. But when he returns, we eagerly take up the story again. 

The illustrations, by Boris Kulikov — who illustrated the wonderful “Max’s Words” and “Max’s Castle,” both by Kate Banks — lends a delightfully comic, almost cartoonish, touch to material that might have been stimulating even as literal illustration-as-exposition. Instead, as in the Max books, Kulikov amplifies the text with glorious depictions of a human being’s wildest imaginings.  

For example, describing Barnum’s realization that a rock brought to him by a friend is actually the horn of a Triceratops, he paints Brown perching the fossilized horn on the snout of a Triceratops outline, drawn like a map in his office, its shape extending beyond the room’s walls into a wild, outdoor landscape. A memorable image shows the dapper Brown (he often prospected in fur coat and bowler hat) dancing with an imaginary dinosaur, his newly discovered T. rex skull aglow in the moonlight behind him.
And of course, there’s the true-fairy-tale ending, with Brown astride a T. rex, lumbering across Central Park, the American Museum of Natural History alight in the distance. As an author’s note explains, when Brown first arrived at the museum, in 1897, the institution didn’t have a single dinosaur specimen in its collection. By the time he died, in 1963, it had the largest collection in the world, most of it assembled by Brown. He has probably made as many children happy as did old P.T. himself.

Monday, May 28, 2012

Starred Review - School Library Journal!

Bravo for Barnum!  I'm so excited to announce that School Library Journal has given Barnum a starred review in its June issue!  Here's the review:

FERN,Tracey.Barnum’s Bones: How Barnum Brown Discovered the Most Famous Dinosaur in the World. illus. by Boris Kulikov. 40p. bibliog. photos. CIP. Farrar/Margaret Ferguson. 2012. Tr $17.99. ISBN 978-0-374-30516-1.LC 2010048846.

K-Gr 4–Barnum Brown had a nose for fossils, trudging along behind his father as he plowed his Kansas fields, picking up ancient clams and corals. And that nose, according to Fern’s chatty, readable text, led to a lifetime of work for the American Museum of Natural History in New York (originally under the guidance of Henry Fairfield Osborn). A brief glimpse at Brown’s early years leads to his expeditions to Patagonia and the American West, and the discovery of his most exciting find–Tyrannosaurus rex. Kulikov’s cartoon illustrations splash across the spreads, their golds, browns, oranges (and an occasional bright blue) forming a perfect backdrop for the text, and for a scattering of correspondence between Brown and Osborn tucked into the endpapers (“Please...send me 1/2 doz. short, heavy chisels….”). An extensive author’s note provides further biographical detail about this productive paleontologist. This book is simpler than Deborah Kogan Ray’s stellar Dinosaur Mountain: Digging into the Jurassic Age (Farrar, 2010), which has a similar format, and is on a par with David Sheldon’s handsome Barnum Brown: Dinosaur Hunter (Walker, 2006). T. rex lovers will gobble it up, and seekers of easy biographies will be hot on their heels.–Patricia Manning, formerly at Eastchester Public Library, NY

Thursday, May 24, 2012

Starred Review - Booklist!

I'm honored that Barnum's Bones has received a lovely starred review from Booklist.  Here's the review, which will be published in the June issue.  Go Barnum! 


      Barnum's Bones: How Barnum Brown Discovered the Most Famous Dinosaur in the World.
Fern, Tracey (Author) , Kulikov, Boris (Illustrator)
May 2012. 40 p. Farrar, hardcover, $17.99. (9780374305161). 560.92.

On February 12, 1873, Barnum was born. No, not that Barnum—Barnum Brown. His parents hoped his “important-sounding” name would lead him to do important things, and it didn’t take long for their wish to come true. As soon as Barnum could toddle, he collected fossils—so many that they overflowed the house. Years later, when he heard about dinosaur fossils unearthed out West, he wanted in on the action. Barnum often went prospecting in “a fur coat, suit and tie, buffed black boots, and a bowler hat,” and he found bones—lots of them—but wasn’t satisfied. A professor at the New York’s Museum of Natural History hired Barnum, believing “he must be able to smell fossils,” and sent him on collection trips. But Barnum’s big find would come in the early 1900s with the discovery of bone fragments from a new species, which Barnum named Tyrannosaurus rex, or his “favorite child.” After Barnum later unearthed a perfect T.rex skull, an entire skeleton was pieced together by 1915, drawing millions of visitors. Fern (Buffalo Music, 2008) writes in language brimming with personality and vividly captures the scientist’s over-the-top personality, while Kulikov’s intricate renderings of dinosaur bones are truly breathtaking. This will captivate the masses of kids whose jaws drop in the presence of hulking fossils. An author’s note concludes. — Ann Kelley

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Dinos in the Backyard

In the spirit of Barnum Brown, I recently went on a dinosaur hunt.  On a visit to the Harvard Museum of Natural History, I checked out the Museum's Triceratops, which is the 'type specimen' or the first one ever described.   While Barnum Brown was a student at the University of Kansas in 1895, his expedition discovered a nearly perfect Triceratops skull in eastern Wyoming.  In addition, it was Barnum's chance encounter with a Triceratops' horn that he received from his friend William Hornaday that led Barnum to Hell Creek, Montana, where he eventually discovered T. rex.


 






I also saw the world's only mounted Kronosaurus, a 42-foot-long prehistoric marine reptile (not technically a dino).  This interesting article details some of the history of this specimen.






This specimen was also on display: 


Can you identify it?