Mari

Most children go through a dinosaur phase. Learning all the tongue-twisting names, picking favourites based on ferocity, armour, or sheer size. For many kids this love of ‘terrible lizards’ fizzles out at some point between starting and leaving primary school. All those fancy names slowly forgotten, no longer any need for a favourite. For all those child dino fanatics who didn’t grow up to become paleontologists, dinosaurs seem like something out of mythology. They are dragons, pictures in books, abstract, other, extinct.

Best-selling author Beverly Donofrio is building a growing following of fans with her honest, moving accounts of experiences from her own colorful life. Riding in Cars with Boys--the basis of the hit movie starring Drew Barrymore--is her funny and touching account of growing up too fast in the 1960s.

They entered the old prison. Summer had just started. It was an abandoned prison and just the two of them. Kylie and Destiny. “I don’t know why we have to do this,” Destiny grumbled. It wasn’t the highlight of her day. “I want to see what it looks like on the inside.” Kylie whined. Kylie was for adventure, and Destiny was not.