Jason Koivu's Reviews > A Day with the Dinosaurs

* * * Read & Reviewed With My Niece * * *

Reading this when we did really worked out great! Even though it's not the best Choose Your Own Adventure I've ever read, it did help fill in details to a plan I had which would with any luck make my niece's childhood that much more memorable.

"You were mean to me," Emma said to me in a soft and sad voice, while fighting back tears. We were five or ten minutes removed from the event in which I was apparently mean to her, and in this topsy turvy world of fast-paced babysitting, I had to cast my mind back over all we'd recently done before realizing she was actually more upset that I'd just beaten her twice in Uno, and so she'd trumped up some minor silliness in order to have something to be sad about. Forget it, kid! Take your pity party elsewhere!

When she's trying to force out tears, I do my best to move things along. It's pretty obvious she's making a mountain out of a mole hill, so in this instance I grabbed this book and just started reading aloud. She tried to ignore me, but a few t-rex roars had her curling up next to me to see the illustrations and offer her choices on the direction this CYOA should go.

A Day with the Dinosaurs feels and looks a bit Hardy Boy-esque. A bunch of kids help an archeologist dig for dino bones. Bones are found! What will your participation be in the find? The Cave of Time, that old CYOA time-traveling standby makes an appearance, because why? Because dinosaurs, that's why! You didn't think they'd make a book just about digging up dusty bones, did you?

After run-ins with a number of different dinos that Emma knew about, she became her old, animated self again. Although in the end we weren't enamored of this one, it did help bridge the emotional gap.

It also inadvertently helped set-up my plans that day, plans that had been in the making almost since the day she was born. For the last six to seven years I've been collecting items to include in a treasure chest which Emma would one day "happen" to find. I've bought Murano glass for her from Murano itself, had my brother send me delicate scarves from China, added my own pocket watch with visible gears to the collection, built necklaces out of stuff from Michael's that didn't look too plasticy cheesy, and bargained for dusty old baubles at flea markets. I found a chest online that was new, yet looked old enough to have been owned by pirates hundreds of years ago. I waited until Emma was old enough to understand and appreciate what was going on, but not too old that she wouldn't believe it could really be happening (that's a small window of opportunity, folks!) When the day arrived, I covered the chest in a canvas sack and placed it in a larger box I'd buried in my backyard. The next day I had Emma help me move some dirt in the backyard.

"First we do some work and then we can go swimming."
"Okay!"

As planned, her shovel was the one that struck the wooden box.

"I found something," she cried.
"What is it?"
"I don't know!"
"Well, dig it up!"

We shoveled away the dirt and carefully wiped off the top and edges of the box.

"Like the archeologists," said my wife referring to A Day with the Dinosaurs. It felt very much like that or even Indiana Jones as Emma slid back the lid and we removed the shrouded chest. The intrigue and excitement were palpable. This little moment would provide lasting memories. This book? Not so much. However, it did serve a minor role in all this, which I appreciate.