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Ages 12m-5
Interests: Dinosaurs!!!
Fiction
Picture Book
34 pages
Author and Illustrator: David Ezra Stein
An Interview With David Ezra Stein, author of Dinosaur Kisses
Diana: Hi, David. We are so happy to feature your book Dinosaur Kisses for the Princess Awesome Book Club. Can you tell us what inspired such an adorable and ferocious book?
David: A fellow illustrator asked me to write a book about dinosaurs for his wonderful young daughter. He said he couldn't draw dinosaurs.
I thought that was a fun idea. At the time, my son was about 2, and was very shy. At the park, I noticed that his friends would come running up to him, shouting his name, and practically jump on him, to say hello. So that's where the personality of Dinah came from.
Diana: We love that Dinah is a GIRL dinosaur! Obviously, dinosaurs are for everyone, and its great to see some female representation in the Mesozoic. Why did you choose that and have you gotten any pushback?
David: Yes, I suppose at least half of the dinosaurs were female! Well, the book was written for a girl. And it just worked so beautifully to have a female lead. I was able to include kissing and chomping in the same book, which is way more interesting than only one or the other.
Also it was a lot of fun to draw a yellow Dino with pink spots. That was a character design I'd never seen before. Green gets boring.
Diana: And, the most important question of all: what kind of dinosaur is your favorite, and why?
David: My favorite dinosaurs were Triceratops! They were like big cows with an extra horn. I think I would like to scratch one under its chin.
Check out the fabulous Dinah from Dinosaur Kisses, singing the blues!
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I’m an illustrator, surface designer and educator based in Atlanta, GA. I live with my boyfriend and our three rescue kitties, who very often make it into my art, especially the two black cats.
I feel very comfortable creating art for kids, because I'm really a kid at heart. I love cute animals and bright colors. I find it particularly satisfying to distill complex concepts into simple shapes that are stylized but easily recognizable.
Sienna Farr was one of Princess Awesome's first models, before our Kickstarter, before we were much more than a dream and a few dresses made of tee shirts and quilting material. She died in a fire that also seriously injured her mother on August 11, 2023, aged 13.
Princess Awesome is so proud to partner with Women in Aviation International to sponsor a design contest during the summer of 2023. We are looking for your awesome ideas for new clothing that features airplanes, helicopters, engineering concepts, schematics - anything that has to do with aviation.
Anya Marsalek Leveille
June 07, 2018
I love this book! I think my daughter was 3 when we first got it from the library, and as I read it, she was literally rolling on the floor laughing so hard she couldn’t breathe.