They also delight in the humor of different subplots: a young boy misbehaving in a museum, a grandma who asks her obedient granddaughter 'where is your mischief?' etc. Readers empathize with the heartbreak and loss of young Julia's family. (Last year when 4th graders saw that 3rd graders were reading it, many of them exclaimed how much they loved this book.) It's a powerful book. It is a book that connects with kids at a deep level, and I always marvel to watch this happen.

I teach gifted third graders using this text and have used it multiple years. Who knows-you might have hidden dinosaur bones in your own back yard… Will she bring a little souvenir of her girlhood, as she seeks to put closure on a painful wound, which has haunted her all her life? What emotions and memories will be revived as she confronts the reconstructed skeleton which cost her family so much! This YA book proves an exciting and dramatic read-pervaded by a grim foreboding which should be of equal interest to boy and girls. Yet this spunky Grandma has a private agenda, as she saves Dinosaur Hall for the last exhibit she shows off. Young Julie’s passionate memories of that fateful summer are intertwined with her long-savored trip to a city museum with her own grandchildren, two whom she confides the entire tale. Three gutsy kids try to protect their amazing creek side discovery, but beware of the snakelike antagonist with deadly dreams of avarice.Ĭonsisting mostly flashbacks the book engages in time shifts-a literary seesaw which keeps readers alert as we slip between the Present and Past in the same chapter.

He is unprepared for unscrupulous men who lie, deceive, cheat and are even willing to commit murder for gain and fame.

Noble aspirations, truly, but naïve Daniel is soon to be initiated into the dirty business of dinosaur hunting, excavating and profiteering.

Bones and Bravery are all he needs-although he does not factor in the devotion and quick wit of his little sister. Despite living in a primitive soddy the plucky youth has grate dreams: to find a dinosaur skeleton and sell it for a small fortune-enough to save the family farm. These two siblings enjoy a unique and intense bond of love as they are only surviving offspring of a Nebraska farm family. Prairie girl Julie Creath adores her older brother, Daniel as a girl and beyond when she is a grandmother.

My daniel by pam conrad