Summary:
Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins loved animals and sketching them from the time he was a child. As a man, he found his true passion in bringing dinosaurs to life. Waterhouse Hawkins lived a full and interesting life in the 1800's. He introduced Queen Victoria to long extinct reptilian creatures, hosted a famous diner party inside an Iguanodon, and was the first person to truly make dinosaurs capture the world's attention. This book showcases a life filled with "firsts" and a man's mission to share the wonder of dinosaurs.
My Evaluation:
If you were to ask most parents whose children are able to pronounce four syllable dinosaur names where this interest in dinosaurs began, most would not be able to provide an answer. This book does the wonderful service of informing the public as to where the world's fascination with these remarkable creatures originated, and it does it with style. By the time I finished reading the book, I found myself wanting to visit Crystal Palace Park and take my shovel to Central Park to find the destroyed models. The illustrations are thoroughly researched (the illustrator actually visited the surviving models) and beautifully rendered, and the text is captivating and memorable. The book helps us to remember an important, interesting, and wonderfully eccentric personality that history has largely forgotten. Furthermore, I appreciated the scientific information provided - how the models were created, how the views of dinosaurs have changed, etc. This book provides a history and science lesson combined in this must-read story.
Reviews:
Children's Review The Dinosaurs of Waterhouse Hawkins. (2001). Publisher's Weekly. Retrieved from http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-439-11494-3
As a child growing up in 19th-century London, Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins discovered his passion: drawing and sculpting animal figures, especially prehistoric dinosaurs. His artistic talent and his goal—to build life-size models of dinosaurs envisioned from scientific fossils—led him to work with noted anatomist Richard Owen and complete a special commission from Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, an installation of dinosaur statues, much of which still stands in contemporary Sydenham, England. During the project, Hawkins courted the scientific community by hosting a lavish New Year's Eve dinner party inside his life-size model of an iguanodon (the bill of fare is reproduced on the final page). Selznick (The Houdini Box, see p. 94) builds to the dramatic moment by showing readers a peek at giant reptilian toes through a parted curtain.
Kerley (Songs of Papa's Island) leads readers into further exploration of Hawkins by presenting copious but never dull details of the stages of his life and works, including efforts in the U.S., thwarted by Boss Tweed. Throughout, she suffuses her text with a contagious sense of wonder and amazement. Selznick enthusiastically joins the excitement with his intricate compositions, capturing Hawkins's devotion to his art and depicting the dapper man with wild white hair as a spirited visionary and showman. The elegant design on tall pages gives the dinosaur models their due from various perspectives, and scenery of the period additionally grounds the work in historic context. Extensive author and illustrator notes denote the extensive (and fun) research both undertook for this extraordinary volume. Ages 6-up.
The Dinosaurs of Waterhouse Hawkins. (2001). Kirkus Reviews. Retrieved from https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/barbara-kerley/the-dinosaurs-of-waterhouse-hawkins/
Who could resist? Staring straight out from the handsome album-like cover is a slight man with a shock of white hair and an intense, intelligent gaze. Over his shoulder looms the enormous mouth of a dinosaur. This is perfectly designed to pique reader’s curiosity with one of the strangest true stories dinosaur lovers will ever read. The man is Waterhouse Hawkins, who, in Victorian England, devoted his life to making ordinary people aware of dinosaurs at a time when most had never heard of them and could not imagine what they looked like. Hawkins, an established author/illustrator of books on animal anatomy, estimated the scale of the dinosaurs from their bones, made clay models, erected iron skeletons with brick foundations and covered them over with cement casts to create dramatic public displays. Such was Hawkins’s devotion to his work that he engaged the Queen’s patronage, catered to the fathers of paleontology at a dinner party inside an iguanodon model, and was invited to bring his dinosaur models to Central Park. It was in New York that Hawkins’s story turned grimly sad. Antagonizing Boss Tweed with some ill-chosen words, Hawkins thereafter found his dinosaurs smashed and buried beneath Central Park, where they remain today. The fascinating story, well documented in authoritative, readable author and illustrator notes, is supported by creative decisions in illustration, bookmaking, and design. Hawkins was a showman, and Selznick presents his story pictorially as high melodrama, twice placing the hero front stage, before a curtain revealing a glimpse of the amazing dinosaurs. Turns of the page open onto electrifying, wordless, double-page spreads. A boy who appears at the book’s beginning and end (where he sits on a park bench in Central Park while fragments of the lost dinosaurs lie among the tree roots below) affects a touching circularity. Stunning.
My Suggestions for Use in a Library Setting:
I would use this book in a school library for students traveling to London for a school trip. The book would be one of several read to show the history and wonder that is hidden in the city. I would try to coordinate with the teachers going on the trip to make it possible for the students to visit Dinosaur Island in Crystal Palace Park.
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