The Clues are in the Poo

Fresh off of my review of Jane Kurtz’s The Bone Wars, I’ve got another of her books to present to you today! For The Clues are in the Poo, Kurtz is joined by paleontologist Karen Chin as co-author to educate readers about her paleontological specialty: Coprolites! AKA fossilized poop. Regular readers of my blog may remember her appearance in Daring to Dig (and to a lesser extent, Dining With Dinosaurs & The Dinosaur Expert), but now we get a whole book both by and about her!

For as much as this book is about the study of coprolites (including a brief nod to Mary Anning‘s initial epiphany about their nature), it also recounts the life of Karen Chin and how she came to study this subject.

One repeated phrase throughout the book goes something along the lines of “They looked like this”, the “they” usually referring to various institutions that were much more homogenous back in the day. This subtly invites readers to consider the biases inherent to such restrictive organizational practices, and emphasizes how Karen’s trailblazing work at several different jobs throughout her career helped to open up the respective fields to new perspectives and new questions to pursue.

The illustrations by Francisco Riolobos are bright & colorful, perfect for the book’s child audience, giving a friendly and inviting vibe. While not as major a focus as in some books, I was pleased to see that the dinosaurs that appear in this book are fairly true to life, even though a “rigorous” recreation was not necessarily the intent.

The humor inherent to scatological topics, even when discussed in a completely straight-faced manner, means that coprolites are always a big hit with kids. (There’s a reason both Professor Flint and The Amoeba People wrote songs about coprolites!) I’m sure any dinosaur-loving youngster would enjoy The Clues are in the Poo, and they’ll learn a bit of information about an important paleontologist to boot! As with Kurtz’s other dinosaur book, I happily give this one my Dino Dad Stomp of Approval as well. Check it out for yourself!