Edwina, The Dinosaur Who Didn't Know She Was Extinct

Edwina, The Dinosaur Who Didn't Know She Was Extinct
By: Mo Willems








BIBLIOGRAPHY

Willems, Mo. 2006. Edwina, The Dinosaur Who Didn't Know She Was Extinct. New York, NY: Hyperion Books for Children. ISBN 0786837489

PLOT SUMMARY

In this whimsical tale, Edwina is the dinosaur that everyone in town loves. Helpful, playful, and an excellent baker, she is dear to every community member but one. Reginald Von Hoobie-Doobie has it in his mind that all dinosaurs are extinct, and he makes it his mission to convince the rest of the town of this sad fact. Despite numerous attempts to persuade the townspeople of the fallacy that must be Edwina, he is pushed to the point of frustration when no one in town will listen to or believe him. The only one willing to listen to Reginald is Edwina who, after listening carefully to his arguments, decides he's right but that she just doesn't care if she's extinct. Here Willems successfully underlines one of the fundamental beauties of childhood...believing in the incredible and seemingly impossible.

CRITICAL ANALYSIS

Willems is a talented author and illustrator who truly knows how to write the way children read. His illustrations of plates of cookies on the inside and back pages engage the reader right away. The characters in this story are beautifully and realistically personified, with Edwina wearing pearls and a hat while carrying a purse. She is a lovely character that the readers will end up wishing could exist in their own town. The disbelief on the townspeople and the frustration of Reginald Von Hoobie-Doobie are expertly illustrated, and Willems' talent allows the readers to feel Edwina's shock as she realizes that, yes, she really must be extinct.

The illustrations vary between softly colored and non-colored illustrations on opposing pages, with some well placed double page colored illustrations. The pages where the reader is meant to focus more on the emotion of a character contain less illustration while other pages contain more detail. These techniques, as well as embedding the text in various and changing locations on the page, keep the reader visually engaged and studying the illustrations for more information.

Mo Willems has created a niche with the early elementary and younger set. His characters express themselves, in their actions, body language, and manner of speaking in ways that are both believable and relatable. He wonderfully captures how children feel and behave sometimes, and makes everyone wish they had a dinosaur like Edwina to bake some chocolate-chip cookies for them.

REVIEW EXCERPTS/AWARDS

Starred review in BOOKLIST: "Consider this an enjoyable visit to a happy community that has no room for curmudgeons."

Starred review in CHILDREN'S LITERATURE: "...just a few strokes of his talented fingers and we can really 'see' Reginald's frustrations and efforts to be convincing."

Starred review in KIRKUS: "The just-right resolution is a tribute to the child's rock-solid faith in how the world should be, not how it really is."

CONNECTIONS

*Study other books by Mo Willems, and analyze the characters within. These might include any from the "Pigeon" series or the "Elephant & Piggy" series. What similarities do you see in the characters he writes and illustrates? Who do you most relate to?

*Read other dinosaur books, including Whatever Happened to The Dinosaurs (ISBN 0152952969), If the Dinosaurs Came Back (ISBN 0152380213), and A Dinosaur Named After Me (ISBN 0152234934) by Bernard Most. These books lend themselves wonderfully to allowing students to use their imaginations like Mo Willems and creatively decide what really happened to the dinosaurs, what they would do if they actually came back, and what type of dinosaur they might like to be themselves.