I do not know if I would call a dinosaur Ruth, but since Ruth Mason discovered so many of them, I guess one named Ruth is not so bad. And in A Dinosaur Named Ruth: How Ruth Mason Discovered Fossils in Her Own Backyard we see how she found so many goodies that would make up Ruth and many many more dinosaurs.
It was 1905 and a girl named Ruth found strange rocks on her family’s land. Over the years, she keeps finding more, but everyone tells her they are nothing special. Year after year, Ruth’s collection grows. And grows. In 1979 a young man knocks on Ruth’s door. And a woman in her 80s answers, and though the man was looking for evidence of sea creatures on the now prairie land, Ruth shows him her collection. Art blooming on the landscape turns out to be thousands of dinosaur fossils and now people know what Ruth knew all along, she had something special there.
Julia Lyon crafts a story that is based in fact but has taken on the tone of a fictional story. Alexandra Bye’s illustrations are bright, colorful, sweet, sassy and are a story within themselves. Cartoonish without being comical, I could see this done as a short cartoon (like Reading Rainbow used to do, or CBS Storybreak from the mid-1980s)
The end includes an authors note and more reading information. Due to the longer length and the fact there is not a lot of traditional action, this story is for the older reader, for people who like dinosaurs, or interested in nature/science.