Glaring straight at you from the cover and from the first double-page spread is a big, bad, gleaming blue and green Tyrannosaurus Rex, with fearsome claws and huge white choppers, exuding a light blue stream of bad breath. "Are you BAD?" he growls ferociously. The first time I shared this brash picture book with a large group of kindergarteners and first graders, I read that line aloud in a gravelly dinosaur voice. As one, they instantly snarled back, "YEAH!" (Ever since that Pigeon character asked us if he could drive that bus, kids have found it perfectly natural to talk back to books.) I didn't anticipate their quick response, and it cracked me up. Stay in character, I admonished myself.

"I'm REALLY bad. Scare-the-tails-off-all-the-other-dinosaurs BAD," continues the biggest, baddest reptile of all. His big empty belly is growling for GRUB. "Watch me catch some TWEETS," he commands. What follows is a wild rumpus and chase scene across the colorful prehistoric landscape as the mega-reptile lunges, without success, after birds and smaller dinosaurs. "I NEED CHOW RIGHT NOWOWOWOWOWOW . . .," he howls, throwing himself on the ground in a tantrum worthy of any little child.

You could stop reading right there, at the climax, and tease your listeners with the gate-fold page that lifts straight up. "What do you think is under there?' ask them. "What do you think will happen next?" Or not. It's up to you to decide when it makes sense for you to interrupt the flow of a story, so don't feel in any way obligated to ask probing questions every time you read aloud. And won't they scream with delight when you lift up the page and there's T. rex's far-bigger mother, looming over him. "Mom? I wasn't crying," he says plaintively, no longer as big or bad as you assumed he was; he's just a mommy's boy, starving for some Mesozoic Age chow. Kids love to reenact that scene with you playing the parent, while they act out the dino-kid tantrum.

Balance the story with exciting and easy-to-read nonfiction picture books about dinosaurs, such as Vivian French's T. Rex and Karen Wallace's I Am a Tyrannosaurus. Also read Kate McMullan's cheeky companion books, narrated by a garbage truck in I Stink! (complete with an alphabet of garbage), a tugboat in I'm Mighty, and a backhoe loader in I'm Dirty (complete with a counting motif, 1 to 10).

THEMES: BEHAVIOR. DINOSAURS. FOOD. MOTHERS AND SONS. PERSONAL NARRATIVES. POINT OF VIEW. TYRANNOSAURUS REX.