While this book originally came out in 2009, it is both written and illustrated by Douglas Florian.  A poet AND an author-illustrator?  Now that is a rare find!

DINOTHESAURUS is a wonderful poetry picture book collection of poems all about dinosaurs.  Each poem highlights a specific dinosaur, digging into the name or characteristic unique to each one.  Douglas Florian also uses his unique sense of humor to play with the words in each poem, as well as with the subject matter.  Some are informative, but some are just silly (which is the way kids like them best).  Even better, each poem provides a friendly pronunciation guide for those of us who struggle with all those long fancy names.

His choice of illustration for this particular collection is collage.  It seems that it must include bits he painted himself, but I’m not 100% sure.  It’s a wonderful hodge podge of things though on each page.  I never knew what I was going to discover as I turned to the next page (in either words or visuals!).  It was such a fun and imaginative book.  Here’s the one I chose to share, to give you a better idea of what I’m talking about:

And if you’re looking for more poetry fun this month, be sure to check out the Kidlitosphere Event Roundup!