Rating:

“Survival is the only true measure of success.”

Author: Robert T. Bakker

Getting involved in the excitement of Jurassic Park: Rebirth reminded me of my undying love of all things dinosaurs, which started in my childhood when I saw the first Jurassic Park movie on a rainy night in a drive-in in Memphis. With equal parts nostalgia and continued obsession, I started to go through my library, looking at books that I’d bought with extreme excitement and just never gotten around to reading. I finally read and adored Footprints of Thunder and then, there it was, the discarded library book copy of Raptor Red sitting in my bookcase. It was finally, finally time.

Author Robert T. Bakker was a consultant on the Jurassic Park films, and in Raptor Red he marries his academic knowledge and precision with a love of animals. Raptor Red is personified in a way, but she definitely remains a wild, strong animal. She does not think and feel like we do, and her world is led by the hunt, by the desire to mate and nurture young but also by an insatiable, playful curiosity. She is a believable animal, one that you could imagine in a Wild Discovery or Nature episode, yet Bakker also brings out her soul, because he knows that wild creatures are more than instinct, just as we are. And there you have it, the basis for a story that is half ancient nature show and half drama-documentary. At times it can sound a little dry, but as the story moves on, we find ourselves caring for the dinosaurs as characters.

Raptor Red knows herself, but not by words, as we would. Hers is not a language, but a visualization, an identity based on memories and experience and color. She knows herself as a raptor with a red hue. While Bakker interrupts her at times to give a bigger scope to this world, to explain things she could not know about her ancestors and her evolving environment and the other dinosaurs that watch her, it is her personality and observations that drive the thrust of the tale and make us care.

The story starts with tragedy – Raptor Red tries and fails to save her mate after a successful hunt turned deadly. On her own, she cannot catch the large prey that sustains her species, and she is driven to forage. Eventually, however, she comes across her neurotic sister who has three chicks (but no mention is ever made of a mate). As the unlikely family unit moves to avoid the deadly Allosaurs (the ultimate predator of the time as, sadly, T-Rex won’t come until far later), Raptor Red seeks a new mate, but between the dangers of her environment, the threats of competition, and her sister’s violence, it looks like our little raptor may be unable to fulfill both her instincts and her desires. Meanwhile, the ecosystem around her is changing, more dinosaurs are exploring new territories, and new threats are forever lurking.

At first, it starts with some of that academic dryness, that desire for detail and precision, but as the story goes along, Bakker hits the right balance between education and imagination, and Raptor Red’s personality starts to shine. By the end, we are deeply involved in this complicated little family. It’s a story with adventure and risk, one with emotion and ingenuity, with a strange humor and a beautiful gentleness that reveals the souls and lives of animals. It’s a fun dinosaur adventure that does what few stories do – puts us in the time and place of dinosaurs and lets us walk around in their thundering footsteps and see the world through their slitted eyes. Unlike Jurassic Park, the animals are right where they belong, and we get a sneak peek into their daily lives that will leave us painting vivid pictures and feeling big emotions. Recommended.

– Frances Carden

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Frances Carden
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