Dactyl Hill Squad

Do I really need to tell you anything else besides THIS IS A CIVIL WAR STORY WITH DINOSAURS?  Because, honestly, that's all it took for me.  I mean, ok, it is written by Daniel Jose Older whose adult and YA books I've loved.  Why wouldn't I love his new middle grade series?The dinosaurs are both all important and just part of the background in this world.  They are used as draft animals.  The big ones function as buses and ferries.  Triceratops pull carts.  The bad guys ride carnivorous dinos.  This fantasy imagery is set along side a plot inspired by real events.  There was a ring of white businessmen in New York who kidnapped and sold free colored people into slavery.  The colored children's home did burn in the Draft Riots.  This book imagines what would have happened if the survivors of the fire found their way to a resistance cell and learned to fight back -- WITH DINOSAURS! I'd recommend this book to anyone because of the imaginative world building and a look at a part of Civil War history that isn't often discussed, even without there being dinosaurs.  The dinosaur angle would work well to pull in readers who may be reluctant to read a book about the past.  This review was originally posted on Based On A True Story