NNtG: Graveyard School #05: Revenge of the Dinosaurs

When you think about it, we don't get a lot of dinosaur horror stories with these kids horror books. Which given the hype and popularity of Jurassic Park, you'd think that would be a shoe-in for any author pumping out a quick buck book. But leave it to Graveyard School to be one of the rare examples. But it's also Graveyard School, and we haven't found that one true book in the series I loved, so I'm also not expecting much. Can this be the one to finally slap my expectations in the face? Let's find out with Revenge of the Dinosaurs. 

I really like this cover. There's just so many little details that makes it a memorable cover. The T-Rex smashing through the window with the shards of glass flying everywhere, so if the T-Rex doesn't eat the kids, the glass will surely give them some bad cuts. I like the pictures on the window and how goofy they all look. Silly yet weirdly creepy in a way that little kid art can be. The kids also not really reacting too hard when it comes to, again, a T-Rex smashing through a window is silly but it still works. Overall, you want a cover with dinosaur action, this one does the trick and then some. Great cover. That's usually the death sentence for the book though, oh dear.

David Pike is having a hard time, mainly with his nasty teacher Mrs. Beak. But to be fair, it doesn't help that he's more focused on watching a lizard eat a beetle then to listen to her. He gets sent to Dr. Morthouse, who doesn't give him detention, but she does not he does have a little brother that he should be setting a better example for. When he returns to class however, Mrs. Beak, not satisfied, gives him detention anyway. Now he wants revenge despite, again, this really being his fault. David talks with his friend Raul Perez, who takes David's little brother Richie home while David has detention. We learn that Richie is crazy about dinosaurs, and that their father is an astronomer. I'm so used to how so many of these endings with a parent scientist goes that I already dread what the actual twist is. Hope to be swerved. David, still mad at Mrs. Beak, really wants a dinosaur to eat her, though Richie (named Dino-head by David) says that's impossible given they're extinct, noting the many ways the dinosaurs may have gone extinct, with David joking about little green men from Mars.

When David returns home, he sees that Richie has a book with a new T-Rex, which ne notes the old one got his head bit off by William, the cat that just lives in their house. It's not their pet, it literally was in the house when they moved and I guess squatter's rights count for animals too? Richie puts his T-Rex in a terrarium that Richie got from an old pet store. David notes the T-Rex, which he calls Trex, is very lifelike for what is obviously a small toy dinosaur. Certainly not a real one, right? Richie got it from a place called Cosmic Dinosaurs that was set up where the first fossils were found. David, of course thinks that Richie is a bit too into dinosaurs and treats his toys as if they're real. David has a nightmare of a T-Rex with bloody teeth whose head turns into Mrs. Beak's when Richie wakes him up in a panic. Trex is gone! They find that William took it and soon darts out of the room with it in his mouth. But they manage to get Trex out of his mouth. The figure is unscathed. When they pick it up however, they see a blinding light outside, to which Richie thinks might be a UFO. David just shrugs all of this off and goes back to bed, still hoping for Mrs. Beak's inevitable death.

His wish for her death is furthered when Mrs. Beak decides that David should give a special report. And she lumps Raul in for the hell of it. With no real options, they ask Richie to borrow his dinosaur tank to use for their report. Richie inevitably accepts, but says that nobody should touch the dinosaurs and to be careful with the tank. He then notices one of his dinosaurs, an alamosaurus, was eaten by Trex. Sure enough, one of the dinosaurs is torn up. David chalks it to being William, but Richie is sure it was Trex, given the tank wasn't opened. But David and Raul take some of his dinosaur books to work on their report and think that Richie is too much of a Dino-head that he's starting to think that the dinosaurs are alive. Though David kind of wishes they were just so they could eat Mrs. Beak alive because he's a sociopath. They take the tank and Richie to his class for the report and it goes well, though David notices that the alamosaurus is missing more body parts. So either Richie missed some parts or maybe there's more to what's going on than David thought. Even at dinner, he thinks of his chicken leg as a piece of the alamosaurus and isn't quite hungry.

That night, David hears a crashing noise outside, hears strange voices and smells something awful. So he's even more curious as to what the hell's actually going on. The next morning, a tree outside is completely destroyed, as if by something of a prehistoric reptilian nature. Richie drags David to school early to get the tank, believing it might have been his dinosaurs. After avoiding Basement Bart, the kids  head to Mrs. Beak's classroom and find the room and the tank destroyed and all of the dinosaurs still there except for Trex. Richie believes that Trex found the lizard in the classroom and chased after it. David is now convinced that this might be possible, just as Mrs. Beak shows up, mad about the mess and ready to pretty much get David expelled. But Basement Bart shows up to note that the mess was there the night before, but doesn't fully mention it being dinosaur related. With most of the school destroyed, Dr. Morthouse moves Mrs. Beak's class to the auditorium when suddenly Trex can be seen outside. Richie calls out to him, but David shuts him up because if Dr. Morthouse found out they let a T-rex loose on the school, they would wish they were dinosaur food instead.

After everyone leaves school, David and Richie return to the scene of the crime and find gigantic T-rex footprints, meaning Trex isn't too far. Richie realizes that he must be at the swamp in the woods, and the two decide to check it out the next morning. They find Trex who pretends to sleep. Before they can escape, Trex wakes up and is about to attack, when a triceratops show up and begins to attack Trex. Cyril, another one of Richie's dinosaurs. They return to school and call for help, only to find Mrs. Beak, who is pretty much convinced they're responsible for the damage and is ready to get them both expelled. But before she can, Trex grabs her and presumably eats her alive which damn, this book got dark. Cyril and Trex brawl some more atop of Grove Hill. The boys rush to the dinosaurs when they're hit with a blinding light.

They awaken to find themselves. That is to say two aliens that look like them. The aliens explain that many years ago they were taking the dinosaurs two-by-two from the planet in a weird Noah's Ark type thing, but one of the aliens had stayed on the planet and were selling the dinosaurs in a mail-order scam. They thank the boys for finding the dinosaurs. Before they leave, Richie asks if that means the dinosaurs weren't extinct, to which the aliens say they weren't and they'll be back on Earth soon. Some time passes and Richie is still bummed that Trex and Cyril were taken from him, but he soon finds one dinosaur left in the box Trex came in. 

This book is good. Not exactly a top tier book, but still good regardless. Sadly that means I still haven't found the Graveyard School book I love, but sometimes good is still all you need to be satisfied. I like the plot, how it evolves from just being about David's frustration with Mrs. Beak into this mystery about the dinosaurs and if they're really alive. Even the idea of these dinosaurs being shrunken down and sold off to unsuspecting people is kind of a great idea in its own right. And then there's the twist itself which yes, the book sets up and spoils early on by having David guess that the disappearance of the dinosaurs millions of years ago was the work of aliens, but it at least works to explain what's going on. And we get a murder in this book. Like very little shades of gray when it comes to if Mrs. Beak died or not. She definitely got eaten. No further mention of her definitely seems to confirm that. So props to Graveyard School on actually going dark for once. 

David is a decent protagonist, though one I don't sympathize with all that much. He was being absent minded so Mrs. Beak punishing him makes sense. And he works as the protagonist who doesn't believe in everything that's going on but ultimately has to come to the realization that Richie is telling the truth. Richie is a solid secondary, being the kid who really understands dinosaurs and the one trying to recover his dinosaurs even when they become a threat. Hey, a kid who loves dinosaurs who doesn't cause a genocide. Graveyard School has Animorphs on that at least. Mrs. Beak is a decent antagonist. Constantly cruel and definitely fixated on making David's life hell, so when she gets killed off, you don't really feel bad for her. Raul is mostly Superfluous Clay. Serves the best friend role but otherwise nothing much else to him. We get other characters like Polly Hannah and Jaws, but none really play that big of a role in this one. A bit more with Morthouse, Lucre and Basement Bart, so it's something at least.

So overall, a pretty decent book. It's not the best paced, the plot takes a bit to really get going, and the twist is one you'll either love or hate, I'm fine with it. But it delivers on dinosaur action and gives us a rather rare death for these kids horror books. So overall it's an easy recommend. If you like dinosaurs and want a rather unique kids horror story, this one does the trick just fine. It still means I haven't found the one Graveyard School book I loved, but I am gelling with this series a bit more as I run through them, so maybe that great book is out there. Or maybe this is just going to be a very mid series. Either way, it's good blog fodder. Revenge of the Dinosaurs gets a B+.