Hardcover, 40 pages
Expected publication: August 16th 2016 by Sterling Children’s Books
Source: Publisher
Suppose you like dinosaurs and suppose you want to invite one to your birthday party. If a T. Rex Crashes Your Birthday Party will tell you exactly why having a dinosaur at your birthday party is not something to look forward to.
For instance, they have small hands and can barely do anything well but they are very large so they smash everything. Also, they will break all the toys you receive as birthday presents and scare your friends away. But…you know, somehow in the end when they give you a squishy hug goodbye, you may find that you don’t really hate them and invite them to next year’s birthday party as well.
The picturebook is very much tongue-in-cheek and I don’t know. I enjoyed the tone of the narrative though I felt it was a bit older than your normal picturebook. There is an odd sense of earnestness to the narrator’s tone that I very much enjoyed. Like the older, wiser, brother who tells you the tales of his own epic battles from which you learn to fight your own? Something like that.
The minimal art style coupled with bright colours and dynamic typography works really with the story. Sometimes you get odd and not-nice guests at birthday parties and this book gives a very good example of one. They mean well, they just can’t help being walking disasters.
I don’t know if kids would be as flippant about broken birthday toys as the kid in this book though. Still, this was a fun read and I do think kids will find the image of a dinosaur at a birthday party quite hilarious.
The Book Wars 
Huh…I’d have thought that if a T-Rex crashed your birthday party you’d have bigger things to worry about than broken birthday presents. Nom nom nom. ;)
The first thing that came to my head when I read the title was the book, “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie”