T Rex Generations: A Brief Review

If Halloween is a holiday for children (and adults who want to remain children forever), I'm pretty sure dinosaurs fall into a similar category. Nothing stimulates the imagination in a child's mind like the dinosaur section of a natural history museum. I remember well the visits we took to the Cleveland Museum of Natural History when I was a boy. And later, when my own children were growing, visiting the Museum of Natural History in New York was equally exhilarating.

For Christmas, when we were kids, my father would plop a Sears Catalog onto our laps and suggest the pages we might want to look at for our Santa lists. One year, it was the set of molded plastic dinosaurs that conquered my mind. I can still visualize the Tyrannosaurus Rex from that set. He was the color of cobalt and had that striking stance that probably terrified the prehistoric world.

We'd read about the dinosaurs in books and learned the names: triceratops, brontosaurus, ankylosaurus, and all the other strange creatures of that era. 

This built-in fascination with dinosaurs is undoubtedly what made the film Jurassic Park such a success. Special effects and a great storyline didn't hurt any, either. Spielberg knew how to touch a nerve by putting the children in such danger when all havoc broke loose.

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Last week I acquired a copy of T. Rex Generations, a graphic novel by author/illustrator Ted Rechlin. As an artist he began drawing professionally at age 19 for DC Comics. What a great opportunity for any young artist, to learn the ropes as regards the practical mechanics of story telling in imagery. He has now been working freelance for more than a decade, contributing work to museums, zoos and several publishing companies. His special interest seems to be natural history, hence T Rex Generations.

The storyline follows a family of Tyrannosaurus Rexes who live in Hell Creek, Montana, 66 million years ago during the late Cretaceous Period of the Mesozoic Era. Ma and pa T Rex, Cobalt and Sierra, have just hatched four baby T Rexes. It's a story of survival in a very dangerous world where one wrong move could turn a little one into another creature's dinner or result in a cracked skull.

Ankylosaurus carries a club on his tail.

Rechlin knows how to make the little ones lovable and the parents caring, but his approach is also to deliver an accurate impression of the life of dinosaurs. It's a graphic novel where the details are embedded into the fabric of the story, not intrusive. The illustrations are lush, and the action dramatic. His other books include a book on sharks and another on the end of the ice age.

The little ones meet a Triceratops. Be careful, kids. 

This book is published by Rexroth Studios and is available on Amazon. As the story ends, we see that two of the little ones, Nova and Orion, will be stars of the next generation of T Rexes in this series.

EdNote: I am not part of the Amazon Affiliate program and receive no remuneration if you purchase this book.