diverse picture book (dinosaurs, pets; for preschoolers 3 and up?)
* prominently features diverse characters: yes, the little girl on the cover (and her raptor) stars throughout.
* Good choice for a preschool storytime--the story is longer, but the pictures are funny. Some of the jokes are purely visual (the raptor sneaking up on the child, the child stepping on the tail of the raptor) so it doesn't work as well for dial-a-story over the phone, but in person this is a great choice as a one-on-one or reading aloud to a crowd. ( )

A little girl imagines what it would be like to have a raptor as a pet. Probably not quite as she imagines. ( )

is it a raptor, or a kitty? ( )

Sometimes, a book seems like just a book - nothing to write home about, and clearly other Librarything reviewers concurred with my first response to If I had a raptor, but Publisher's Weekly starred this book, so it made me take another look. You have to appreciate a couple of things: the protagonist who wants the raptor is a girl and she's African American. Neither fact is integral to the story (as School Library Journal points out regarding ethnicity) but that does increase the importance of the book. When girls who love dinosaurs are looking for themselves in books, they find this one. The crux of the problem is that the raptor that is "teensy and tiny" at first; it doesn't stay that way for long. My favorite spread shows the sleepy child with a huge raptor waking her up "nice and early" (the clock shows 4:36 am); when she feeds her pet, the raptor has a response that I know well as a cat owner, with the raptor turning up his nose to breakfast. On second look and trying to see through the eyes of a pre k kid, I can see this story as a read aloud success that would make listeners dissolve into giggles. ( )