What an awful children’s story!

It started out just fine, with a very unconventional (rotund?) Tyrannosaurus Rex talking about his melancholy state since everyone thinks he’s so terrible. He bows his head, announces that he doesn’t know why everyone thinks he’s so terrible, and he feels guilty about stepping on the flowers and squishing them. It leads up to being an uplifting tale about misconceptions regarding the dinosaur—which, in fact, it’s not.

The title is misleading as well, by the way, as it sounds like it’s going to be a book about letters or something like that.

Instead, the books goes on to describe why we think he’s so terrible—he shakes the ground and he eats other dinosaurs (it’s not explicitly shown in the pictures, but it does point out that he’s not a vegetarian while he growls after a bunch of other dinosaurs with his pointy teeth exposed). It also shows a glimpse of how the T. Rex is like other dinosaurs, hatching from an egg and being raised by his mama, which establishes a sense of connection between him and his dinosaur peers.

While the pictures are soft and okay to look at and there are a few funny moments where the dinosaur muses if his life would be different if he could eat trees or be pink or blue, ultimately we are disappointed with a meaningless, morose ending, in which the dinosaur simply announces, “I cannot help that I am so terrible.”

And that’s it.

We’re not given an uplifting ending for this beast among beasts, we’re not really provided with much insight into him at all, and we’re certainly not entertained. The best parts are when the story compares him to other dinosaurs, showing that he’s not so different in many ways—and the text, very simple to read, is perfect for beginning readers. But that is all. It’s really rather pointless—not that every children’s book has to have a point, mind you, but instead of presenting a glimpse into the reality of the T. Rex, we’re given a very bleak outlook into the life of a lonely dinosaur, which might be more appropriate for “emo” teens rather than the preschoolers it was written for!

If anything, this book reminds me that it is worth reading through children’s books before buying them. Yes, I like to let my daughter pick out her own and if they end up being weird, we just discuss them together. But sometimes your ten bucks is simply better spent on something else.