By Syd Hoff
A boy wishes a museum dinosaur could come out and play, and for one whole day it does.
Danny goes to the museum, looks way up at the dinosaurs, and says out loud how much he'd love to play with one. And a dinosaur answers him back. So the two of them simply leave together and spend the whole day at it. They walk through the city, play ball, and give Danny's friends rides, and they try to play hide-and-seek, which a hundred-foot dinosaur is spectacularly bad at. At the end it heads back to the museum, and they say a happy goodbye.
This is one of the books a child reads mostly by themselves for the very first time, and it has stayed in print since 1958 for a reason. The sentences are short, and they repeat in a way that lets a brand-new reader get all the way through and feel proud. And the wish at its heart is one a dinosaur-obsessed child already has: that their favorite museum dinosaur could be their friend for a day. Syd Hoff's drawings are simple and warm, never crowded.