Children's ✦ Penny’s Take
The Dinosaurs and the Dark Star
Robin Bates · 1985
62/100
👎 Skip It
Bates and Simon made an admirable 1985 effort to bring cutting-edge extinction science — including the then-novel Nemesis companion-star hypothesis — to middle-grade readers, and Jennifer Owings Dewey's illustrations give it real visual appeal. The core problem today is that the Nemesis hypothesis has been largely abandoned by mainstream astrophysics, making the book a historical artifact of a scientific debate rather than a current resource. Strong as a snapshot of 1985 thinking; weak as a guide to what we actually know about extinction today.
✦ Penny’s Take — this is The Review Group’s own editorial assessment. Penny’s analytical review line researched this book from real sources and scored it across the lenses shown below. It’s an honest first-party read — not a page-by-page personal one. The gold ✓ Penny Tested mark is reserved for books Penny reads cover to cover herself.
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Show the math
Verdict receipt0–100
safety98
substance62
craft68
originality65
accuracy38
hype55
age-fit82
human-eye58
Penny’s verdict62
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