Mr. Know It All About Dinosaur Names was one of my earliest books. Even at that young age, I knew the importance of having an attractive cover. See? It practically invites you to pick it up. You can see I also knew the importance of letting the reader know the book would be in full color! by clearly indicating it on the cover in print as opposed to showing it by featuring something like a colorful image on the cover. It s the whole show vs. tell dilemma writers have grappled with since we switched from pictograms to glyphs. Didn t have a long-reach stapler available either, so the pages had to be stapled carefully along the edge. There was a bit of a misfire on the second staple. The circled 1 in the upper left corner is to indicate that this was the first book in the series. It s not a page number. The cover doesn t count as a page! Neither does the inside front cover. The inside back cover? Now, sure, that s a page. The paper was originally a pale green color. It hasn t greened with age. The yellowing was caused by the tape used on subsequent pages.
As clearly indicated by the title, this book is going to tell you all about dinosaur names. We start off on a high note by explaining what the word dinosaur means, even showing the separation of the original source words (or word parts), even if not clearly indicating that dino would be terrible and saur would be lizard. But, for being under 10 years old, not a bad start, eh? Copyright 2016 Dan C. Rinnert. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transferred in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the written permission of the author. First Edition: Nineteen-Seventy-Something Annotated Edition: January 2016 Author Website: www.copaceticcyclops.com/dcr
Here we jump right into things and immediately forego the entire plot of the book for, instead of explaining what each dinosaur s name means, we toss that concept entirely and simply indicate the animal s diet. Please note that the dinosaur images have been removed. The source of the images was gift wrap. I cut out each dinosaur and taped them on the pages. As such, those images are likely still protected by copyright and, being that I have no idea the manufacturer of the paper or even the artist, I have no idea who to contact regarding permission to use the images. Of course, the cost of a license to use the images would probably far exceed the profits made by distributing this book, even at the 10 cover price of the original but especially at the price you re paying which is nothing, if you ve downloaded the PDF version. I d have to charge for a print edition. It is disappointing how badly the tape has yellowed over the years. It s really not yellow anymore, is it? I dare not describe what it looks like. Oh? The middle dinosaur whose name tag has long since been lost somewhere? As you may be able to tell from the outline, it s a triceratops.
What happens when you make a mistake on a hand-made and handwritten book? Just write over it and make the letters thicker. Also, the dimetrodon isn t actually a dinosaur. They were extinct before there even were dinosaurs. Sorry to burst your The dimetrodon is the coolest dinosaur ever! bubble.
Ornitholestes was not a peggt eater. Rather, it was erroneously indicated as a plant eater and then corrected to identify it as an egg eater. The letters probably needed to be bolder to make that more clear. In reality, the ornitholestes was probably carnivorous. Also, the tyrannosaurus rex is not a meat 3 eater. Rather, it s a meat eater on page 3 of the book. You just have to squeeze in the page number where ever it fits, you know? Or maybe the pages were numbered first and then I had to avoid writing over the tape. Who knows? The end of the tyrannosaur s tail was cut off from the wrapping paper, thus necessitating that I draw it in lest readers believe he had a stubby tail.
And here we have a better quality tape that has not yellowed after all these years. Pity the yellowing of the tape on the reverse has shown through. In silhouette form, it occurs to me that the trachodon resembles a duck with a tail. If it were still around today, instead of turducken, we could have turtrachodonen. Or, given that the trachodon was much larger than a duck, trachoturducken. Or maybe farmers would raise trachodons instead of chicken and turkey. They probably tasted like chicken. Then again, we d probably say chicken tasted like trachodon.
The better tape again, but this time without the disastrous bleed-thru of the yellowed tape. Pity you can t see the dinosaurs. They look so much better without the yellowed strips of tape. The brontosaurus has a storied history. The brontosaurus was reasonably well-known in popular culture but then paleontologists decided the brontosaurus wasn t distinctively different from the earlier discovered apatosaurus. So, the brontosaurus essentially became nothing more than a synonym for the apatosaurus. Later some paleontologists decided it wasn t an apatosaurus after all but its own distinct species. Thus the brontosaurus is a brontosaurus again and not a synonym for an apatosaurus. Not all agree however and it is probably the subject of heated debates at paleontology conferences. In other words, the brontosaurus is the Pluto of paleontology. Kind of. Just go with it.
It took a lot of tape to make these dinosaurs stick. I don t think it was that no one trusted me with glue but rather that tape, scissors and apparently a stapler were the only tools available to me in my grandmother s junk drawer. It was a part of the kitchen counter that was also part of the dining room. There were four drawers on the dining room side, right below the telephone on the wall. Yes, we used to have phones on the wall and not in our pockets. Top drawer had scissors and tape and stuff. The second or third drawer had the phone book, if I remember right. Maybe the bottom drawer had the phone book. Nice birchwood drawers. It was a neat setup. Naturally retro. The people that wound up buying my grandparents house tore all that out and installed cheap-looking oak cabinets that look like junk. Ugh. As a side note, people didn t like it when I giftwrapped presents because all the tape made them difficult to open. The presents, not the people. I ve never gift-wrapped a person. I think that s illegal in most countries.
At this point, I ran out of dinosaurs from the wrapping paper. So, what else to include in a book on dinosaur names? How about the saber-toothed tiger? We ll just omit tiger and maybe readers will think it s a dinosaur. Using its actual name of smilodon may have better in that regard, but I probably didn t know of that name back then. Also, since these images were hand-drawn by me, I don t have to remove them as I have had to do with the dinosaur images. No third-party copyright concerns here, so these drawings can be shown, though they probably shouldn t be. Fortunately, being in a book meant that my parents never had the misfortune of having to post these illustrations on the refrigerator.
And back to dinosaurs. Specifically, the corythosaurus. Spelled the name wrong? No problem just slash out the extraneous letter! I was apparently not yet skilled at centering page numbers. Or coloring between the lines, even lines I drew.
And now we move on to fish. A lobe-finned fish. Maybe if the drawing isn t too good and I don t mention it is a fish, people will think it s a dinosaur, right? Could be a dinosaur. Could be a blue wolf screaming in pain as it gives birth to a shark. Hard to tell. Also, it probably was not a herbivore.
Not a woolly mammoth, apparently. Just a stone-age elephant. Possible a palaeoloxodon antiquus though it is difficult to tell from the illustration. I m guessing maybe it was blue because I didn t have a gray marker. Blue? Gray? Same thing, right? Er, close enough.
Omnivore was likely not in my vocabulary at that point. Also, this human may be eating a little too much. And who knew they had tanning salons back then? Or maybe he has a diet rich in carrots. Whatever he did to his right hand must have hurt. Upon further reflection, judging from the clothes, such as they are, I m guessing this was meant to represent a modern human. Poor guy. He should see a doctor about that hand.
That s a cave man, a meat and plant eater, not cave meat, man a plant eater. Living in caves meant that falling rocks could flatten the back of a child s head, causing him to grow up with a disfigured skull. Also, while cave men were adept at sewing sleeves, they had yet to master the art of making pant legs. Presumably, of course.
Now we ll move on to insects. They were prehistoric too, right? Close enough. For the record, dragonflies are not herbivores. Mosquitoes are pests, not plants.
Neither are pteranodons. Herbivores, that is. They also weren t dinosaurs. They also had tiny heads, huge wings and a wide tail. Or maybe it was just at a bad angle.
Yes, worms eat dirt. This one probably ate radioactive dirt, thus the bright yellow sheen.
Now we move on to fictional creatures. As I recall, this particular creature was based on a toy I had. But, being in a book makes it true, right? So, if the sea monster is included in a book, then it must will have had existed. Or something. The idea that the sea monster ate plants was probably wishful thinking.
Don t know the name for something? Just describe it as is the case with this wolf-like dog.
The dawn horse was believed to be a horse that was about the size of a dog. It is now no longer considered a horse, though it remains about the size of a dog.
How do you draw a fossil? Easy. Draw it like normal then color it grey, like stone. Poof! Instant fossil. Seeing as I did have a gray marker, this leaves me with no explanation for the blue elephant earlier in the book.
Gasping at straws for stuff to include at this point.
And if a fossilized head of the sea monster is in a book, all the more evidence to make it have had existed.
In this section, readers could feel a dinosaur. Exciting!
Bummer that neither of these are dinosaurs. The dimetrodon can be forgiven considering I was under ten and dimetrodon was frequently labeled as a dinosaur, but an elephant is most certainly not a dinosaur. The dimetrodon example was a piece of paper colored with a pencil and folded accordion-style to approximate the sail on its back. The stone age elephant example was a piece of cotton partially colored with a marker. A gray marker. Don t ask. I don t know either. Also, we re back to the lower quality tape again.
At least the allosaurus is a dinosaur. Its example was a piece of paper colored and then folded to resemble a scale. Did dinosaurs have octogonal scales? The stone age bark was bark from a tree in the yard. Some younger readers may consider my youth to have been in the Stone Age. Sigh.
Make it clear to the reader that the book has ended by clearly indicating it in large letters. I suppose the dividing line was drawn before I decided this would be the last page, presumbly due to running out of ideas for stuff to feel.
One mustn t forget to promote other available books, not that any of these were actually available but I had big plans. Spending an afternoon putting a book together and offering it for ten cents? I was going to be rich! The little purple Dino? What the heck? Did I come up with a purple dinosaur years before an annoying one graced our television screens? Well, not my television screen, unless you count a computer screen and that was only because there was this fun little screensaver that would let you blow up the annoyance. I did start the Insects book. I found it along with this book in some old boxes several months ago. I put it someplace safe where I wouldn t lose it and could later scan it in as I did with this book. Someday, I hope to remember where that safe place is.