Take a T-Rex Home - Rex by Dubosarsky

Rex
Written by Ursula Dubosarsky
Illustrated by David Mackintosh
Scholastic, 2005
31 pages
Fantasy/Realistic Fiction

            I was telling my husband about our class assignment to blog about 30 picture books when my son came running out of his room with this book, Rex.  Noah was so excited about the book, I chose it for the first blog post, and I’m really glad I did.  This book is about a class pet chameleon named Rex.  He is a small thing, but the kids see him as a large T-Rex (hence the name) and each day, one of the children gets to take Rex home for the night.  They write about what they do with Rex and keep a journal about their adventures together.

            The charcoal and water color illustrations are very child-like.  They are designed to look like illustrations a child might draw.  The illustrations use bright colors and coloring “outside the lines” to emphasize the feel of a book or journal written by a child.  Some of the pictures cover a two-page spread while others remain on a single page.  The text is large and is placed in various locations on the pages.  Most pages include both text and illustrations on the same page for a “journal” appearance.



            To my knowledge, this book has not received any rewards, but it lends itself well to multidiscipline or blended learning.  Rex inspires an art lesson for students to draw their own pets or a favorite animal.  Students can visually show how they see the pet or animal on paper to display in a classroom “gallery.”  Character education and citizenship lessons are also great for discussing the different homes and environments Rex visited with each child in the story.  Some lived in an apartment building.  Others lived in a house.  Of course, a language arts lesson works well with the journal writing activity in Rex.  Students could write their own journals for a similar classroom pet, or they could write about what they would do with Rex if they took him home for the night.  Appropriate for preschool and early elementary school students, Rex would be a great picture book to incorporate into classrooms with a class pet, a zoo, or other animal-related field trip, or even a science lesson on lizards or other reptiles.