Dinosaurs Love Underpants

Fans of Aliens Wear Underpants will revel in this companion volume's dotty humor and pell-mell action. The tongue-in-cheek story purports to solve the mystery of why dinosaurs disappeared, and the slapstick illustrations are filled with details to tickle a dino-sized funny bone. Cort pictures a circle of bearded cavemen (including one holding a well-placed fig leaf) watching underwear being invented by one of their companions, who wears leopard-print briefs. The primary colored dinosaurs quickly become underwear obsessed, and sport underwear decorated with flowers, swirls, and wooly mammoth fur, which causes all manner of problems (including fighting over who gets to wear what). The rhythmical pattern of Freedman's text sometimes breaks down, and her rhymes are occasionally slant ("itchy" rhymes with "pinchy"). But the overstated humor of the illustrations is infectious as, in the end, the dinosaur "fighting got so crazy,/ All the dinos were wiped out!" Closing illustrations feature a modern boy putting on dinosaur-decorated briefs while the narrator cautions to treat undies "with great care./ Don't forget briefs saved Mankind./ They're not just underwear!" Ages 4-7. (Dec.)