Lizard from the Park

I'm impressed by how Mark Pett brings an unstudied gentleness to a topic that it usually pretty strong: dinosaurs. Having a kid find a dinosaur egg and hatch it is not, in and of itself, a completely new idea. But the way it's handled in Pett's book certainly is. For one thing, I love that there's a deep, dark part of Central Park where dinosaurs roam and no one has even noticed. The subtle humor continues as Leonard brings the egg back to his apartment tower home: "In his room, Leonard and the egg played together for the entire afternoon." Then there are the disguises, and Buster's sadness, which grows along with his lizardy body. Not to mention the shadowy follower you may not even notice till you flip back through the pages. Along the way, the book is also a love letter to NYC (yay, library lions!). And best of all, we come to an astonishing solution to the problem of how to get Buster back to the park now that he is really big and really green. LIke Pett's earlier book, the wordless The Girl and the Bicycle, Lizard from the Park is tender without being saccharine. The illustrations are beautifully done, too. I like the design on pages such as the spread where Leonard is walking through the woods on the left, and an inset on the right shows him finding the egg (still surrounded by the trees in the larger image). Or the next page, where the apartment tower is shown at the far right in a way that balances nicely against the image of Leonard walking along the city street, an image that carries across the gutter for about 3/4 of the spread. Well, you just have to take a look! The illustrations remind me a little of Bob Graham's work (one of my favorites) and a little of Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes--if Calvin were a nice kid. I recommend you explore New York City with Leonard and Buster. Especially the deepest, darkest part of the park.

I am always on the look out for books for my 5 year old daughter. I am hoping to inspire a shared love of literacy, so good books are like an "investment" in my mind, hopefully helping to instill a love of learning/reading. I came across this cute little book at a local bookstore and love it, I have since purchased multiple copies to give as gifts. It is an especially great gift for friends who live or have an affinity for NYC.. or love dinosaurs, either way...

Very rare to have a male person of color as the protagonist of a children's story, so when I stumbled upon this gem, I jumped on it! The story tells of Leonard who one day walks through the park on his way home from school. He finds an egg and they become inseparable, even when that egg eventually hatches into a lizard that keeps growing and growing. Leonard must come up with a solution to Buster's growth issue. The story is the perfect length to read to a 3 year old at bedtime. Not too long and not too simple/short. Some pages have one sentence. Others have two to three, and no more than four sentences on a page. I've seen picture books with multiple paragraphs on a page, which isn't really going to hold a toddler/preschooler's attention. Older children who are beginning to read should enjoy this too. I loved the illustrations! Soft, but represented "the city" very well. It was nice to see a major city represented as something not scary, tough, and mean. I should emphasize that isn't a story about an African-American little boy, but rather a story about a boy who just so happens to be African-American. The story wouldn't change whatever race Leonard was. It's just nice to have diversity in our home library for a change.

My 3 & 5 year olds love this book and want to read it often. It has very nice illustrations and a cute story that captures their imagination. We brought it on a beach vacation with another family and their kids seemed equal enamored.

Me and my 3 yr old really enjoy this one. It's a simple but delightful story about a mysterious egg a little boy finds in the park. What's inside is the premise of the story. The art is really sweet and we liked the references to New York's Central Park, Natural History Museum, Thanksgiving Day Parade etc.

Fun and cute...my 5 yr old was interested

This is such a sweet story, and good for parents trying to explain why we can't take home wild animals as pets. It's full of imagination and the loveliest illustrations.

I love this latest book by Mark Pett. His work is fantastic and the story is laugh-out loud delightful! This is a perfect book for kids of all ages. My eight year old and I enjoyed this book so much that we are buying copies for the K-3rd grade classrooms at our public school.