By Bill Thomson
Three children find a bag of chalk at a rainy playground, and whatever they draw comes true. That's a delight right up until one of them draws a dinosaur.
It's raining, and three children have an empty playground to themselves. A little bag of chalk is hanging off the spring-rider dinosaur, so they take it. The first child draws a sun on the wet blacktop, and the rain stops and the sun comes out for real. The second draws butterflies, and butterflies lift off the ground and fly away. Then the third child draws a dinosaur, and a full-size Tyrannosaurus rex steps off the pavement and comes after them. They run and scatter and hide. The boy who drew it ends up cornered in a tunnel with the thing hunting him, and he figures out the one move that can save everyone: he draws a rain cloud. The downpour washes the dinosaur back into nothing, the chalk goes back in the bag, and the three of them walk home. Here's the strange part. Thomson painted every page by hand in acrylic and colored pencil, but it looks like photographs, and that's what makes the dinosaur so alarming.
Reach for this one when a child has decided picture books are for babies. The art looks photographed, so an older child takes it seriously, and the chase is a proper chase with proper running. Because the pictures are so precise, there's nothing vague to interpret; a child can tell you exactly what happened and put a finger on the evidence, which is a real win for anyone who's used to being told they got it wrong. My favorite part is the ending. The boy has to reason his way out using the same chalk that got him into trouble, and a child who spots the answer a page ahead of him may feel like the cleverest person in the room. And three children of color get to be the heroes of a big, loud adventure, which I'm glad to have on the shelf.