The Really, Really, Really Big Dinosaur

When a big bully of a dinosaur (he's purple but clearly no relation to Barney) demands that a very little (and awfully cute) blue dinosaur named Jackson hand over his jelly beans, the little reptile demurs. Half of the beans are for his friend, Jackson explains, and "he's a really, really, really big friend." The purple meanie finds that hard to believe%E2%80%94"Everyone knows I'm the biggest and strongest dinosaur around here!" he says, a point he tries to drive home by showing off his physical prowess. Then he discovers that he's morsel-sized when it comes to Jackson's humongous, green buddy. Byrne's (Millicent and Meere) drawings, composed along a single plane, have the emphatic crayoning, saucer eyes and chunky shapes of a comic drawn illicitly during a boring arithmetic unit. The story isn't all that comically taut, and the ending%E2%80%94which finds the bully regurgitated, reformed ("he was happy just sharing"), and welcomed as a member of the gang%E2%80%94is too pat, but Jackson's sly ingenuity in dealing with the aggressor makes it clear that size isn't everything. Ages 3%E2%80%937. (Sept.)