Howard Fine

Nothing educational or meaningful, but a terrific exuberance of what a lot of children spend a lot of time thinking about, wishing for. In my daydream, my restaurant has more exotic foods, not just mountains of the favorites, but then I'm not a six-year-old child. I believe kids would love looking for all their favorites in the illustrations, everyone would love the wordplay including the diner lingo, and smaller children might be surprised by the little twist at the end (though moms see it show more coming from the first page). show less

Zak's Lunch by Margie Palatini is a picture book about a boy and his over active imagination. It's lunch time again and Zak's mother has made him a ham and cheese sandwich. He'd rather have something more exciting. His mother retorts that she's not running a restaurant.

It's the restaurant quip from Mom that sparks Zak's crazy imagination. Soon he's imagining that he's in a magical dinner where he can have whatever he wants in whatever amount. All sorts of fast food and deserts are flung show more around with carefree abandon.

But in the end Zak is brought back from his revere and is convinced to eat the ham and cheese. So after staring off in to space and going to his happy place, I guess, he comes to and Mom wins the lunch battle.

My problem with the book is that I completely feel for Zak. I hate ham and cheese. It's not something I'd ever want to eat of my own accord but there have been plenty of times when I've been in a situation where it was my only choice of food. These were times when I was traveling and the food had been prepared en masse.

But as a parent — even with picky eaters, I can't imagine making such a stink over a sandwich. I'm not suggesting that she bow to Zak's every whim, but a more sensible dialog between the two would have been nice. show less

In this rhyming high-sea adventure we meet a crew of delightful dinosailors who are "hale and hearty—dinotough! / They talk of salty sailing stuff: / Blocks and winches, dinocleats, / Shackles, tacking, trimming sheets."
After readying their ship, and raising anchor using "dinoforce," they head out with the wind. They sing sea songs and "have a ball." That is, until they meet with a storm. They bump into walls—and each other. "They mash the mast and ram the rails." They also become show more seasick. (One double-paged spread shows the dinosailors being sick—thankfully from a distance.) This is enough to convince the bunch to return to blessedly firm land and their homes.
They don't, however, remain at home for long. "Once more they hear adventure's cry, / So dinotravelers say good-bye." This time they choose a more stable form of transportation—a train. show less

This is a book about a mixed group of dinosaurs that go sailing. Bet you never saw that coming :)

It's very cute, and it does offer a lot of chance to learn some specialized nautical terms like "galley" (which you probably never have a chance to say to your preschooler). I will say that the use of dino- in front of every other word can get grating after a while.

There is one scene where the entire ship spews out vomit. My nieces read this book avidly for that one scene so they can yell "EW! show more GROSS!"

Would've given it 4 stars (it's not THAT cute) except I want to bump the average rating up from its current half star rating! show less