cover image Rotten and Rascal: The Two Terrible Pterosaur Twins

Rotten and Rascal: The Two Terrible Pterosaur Twins

Paul Geraghty. Barron's Educational Series, $12.99 (32pp) ISBN 978-0-7641-5918-3

Geraghty's (Dinosaur in Danger) prehistoric fable begins, ""65 million years ago, the world was a deafening place."" The main reason, however, was not geologic instability-which Geraghty nonetheless portrays with brio-but rather the constant bickering of the two title characters, a pair of pterosaur twins. ""By day they would yell at each other, by night they would shout.... They just never stopped."" The protagonists are the spitting image of quarrelling human siblings: they stomp their feet, clench their fists and scream so hard that their tongues stick out and their eyes squeeze shut. When a juicy fish triggers yet another ""hullabaloo"" (""It's mine!"" ""It's mine!""), the other dinosaurs suggest various competitions to determine which twin should get possession fair and square. But the T. rex comes up with the best solution (""Which one of you is the fattest, the juiciest...?""): he eats them both. ""And just in case you were wondering,"" the author wryly notes on the final page, ""they both tasted exactly the same."" Wait, wait, some will cry, shouldn't the final pages have reconciled Rotten and Rascal and then shown them joining forces to defeat the evil T. rex? But most kids will savor the twins' comeuppance at the hands of everyone's favorite prehistoric predator. Ages 4-7.