Name: Lulu and the Brontosaurus
Rating: 3 (7 reviews)
ISBN: 9781416999614

Judith Viorst

Lulu's parents refuse when she demands a pet brontosaurus for her birthday and so she sets out to find one on her own, but the brontosaurus she finally meets in the forest has no intention of becoming a pet. 75,000 first printing.

Lulu and the Brontosaurus

Christian

Lulu spends the first half of the book being bossy and abusive to everyone around her, from her parents to strangers she meets in the forest. So it's difficult to feel sorry for her when things don't go her way. Later she bribes the forest dwellers to leave her alone. Although she's learned to say "please" she never bothers to apologize. Lulu assumes that there will be birthday cake ready whenever she decides to come home, and guess what - there is. She seems just as bossy at the end of the story, like when she tells her parents that Mr B will be staying for cake and lemonade. The author keeps up a defensive running argumentative commentary with the readers, telling us to keep our comments to ourselves because *she* is the author, and she'll tell the story how she wants to tell it. I'm not sure how this will work when we're reading the book to kids... This appears to only be a device so that at then end she can admit that she doesn't know everything about Lulu (since she's "just the person who's writing this story"). The multiple-endings idea is interesting, and I'm interested to see how this plays with kid readers. The illustrations are interesting - I enjoy all the textures in hair, tree bark, brontosaurus skin. My favorite part of the book was discovering a bat asleep in a hole in a tree.

Lulu and the Brontosaurus

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