Dino Poet

K-Gr 3–In the eat-or-be-eaten world of this story, every snack-sized reptile has to hustle to avoid becoming lunch. When the ever-appetizing Frog crosses paths with aspiring poet Coelophysis, Frog employs philosophical wits to redirect Coelophysis’s thoughts from a grumbling tummy to poetry writing. Happily for the unlikely duo, there is plenty of scaled, winged, and sharp-toothed inspiration for creating poems of all kinds. Each of this graphic novel’s five chapters opens with an illustration of a dinosaur that sparks conversation between Frog and Coelophysis in the coming pages. Angleberger uses quippy dialogue as a clever ruse to sneak in poetry lessons like limerick rhyming, epic poem characteristics, and haiku structure. Out of the digitally collaged panels of simply sketched dinos and notebook-lined speech bubbles arises a standout title pulling double duty as a compelling graphic novel and a poetry mentor text.