By the nonfiction author Jonathan D. Whitcomb
Actually, I highly recommend my book that was just published: The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur. I just want to be sure that copies of it go to those young readers who want the adventure of approaching this subject with an open mind. For anyone who wants to believe only in extinct pterosaurs, in all their species, please take note: This book is not for you. What is the subject? Eyewitness accounts of apparent living pterosaurs, and this is NON-fiction.
One important benefit, for readers between the ages of about eight and fourteen years, is in learning to think critically, evaluating what is reported by eyewitnesses of apparent non-extinct pterosaurs. Are those persons telling the truth but mistaken, telling lies, or telling the truth about actual living pterosaurs? You decide.
This book is not exactly about dinosaurs, although some people call these flying creatures “pterodactyls” or “flying dinosaurs.” It’s about a particular kind of featherless flying creature: the ropen. I believe this modern animal is descended from a species of Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaur, similar in some ways (but not in every detail) to some of the ones that are known from fossils.
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Comparisons with The Neverending Story
Young readers of The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur are not likely to literally find themselves in this book, not in the usual sense as we see in the film The Neverending Story. One middle-aged lady in Riverside, California, and one young senior citizen in Ohio—they will find themselves in this book, for it’s about real persons who see real animals. (Those flying creatures that have been directly shocking to those eyewitnesses and indirectly shocking to those who will read about the encounters with them.)
“Forget about it. . . . This book . . . is not for you.” (The Neverending Story)
I’m not joking when I refer to potential readers who will not lift a finger to open the box in which they have squeezed themselves: the dogma of universal extinctions of all species of pterosaurs. The book, The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur, is not for them. If you’ll consider lifting the lid enough to let in a little light, however, please read my book and see where it may take you.
Early in the 1984 fantasy film The Neverending Story, young Bastian asks what the book seller is reading; the man answers, “Oh, this is something special.” Their conversation ends when Mr. Coreander says, “Forget about it. This book is not for you.”
The man says that, however, only to encourage the boy to take courage to disprove those words. When the man said that, he was telling the truth about who Bastian was at that moment. Yet after the boy began reading the book—then he began to change into the person whom the book needed to complete the story, and that would open up a new world of opportunities.
In contrast, The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur is not a fantasy but a nonfiction book. The young reader who enters into it can find that he or she is actually living in a world in which pterosaurs are still flying, not much like the friendly Luck Dragon but nevertheless wonderful to behold for those fortunate enough to witness a ropen.
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The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur
56 pages; 5.5 by 8.5 inches; $7.80 SRP
Nonfiction paperback
ISBN-13: 978-1727778847
Written by Jonathan David Whitcomb (completed Nov 8, 2018)
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Non-fiction “flying dinosaur” book for kids and teens
What a strange way for an author to promote a new book! On November 21, 2018, however, these words were used in marketing The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur: “This book is not for you.” It gets even stranger, but the point is this: If a gift giver and a child/teen recipient of a gift-book want only to be told what to think and they want only to be told old ideas, then The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur is not the book they want.
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About the nonfiction paperback book Live Pterosaurs in America
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Book-gift for a ten-year-old girl
What’s so special about this “dinosaur” book? It’s nothing remotely like a fiction for preschoolers, nothing about a little boy riding on the back of a pretend dinosaur. In simple English, it gives the reader eyewitness accounts of ordinary persons who have seen what they believe are living pterosaurs.
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Living pterosaurs in Papua New Guinea
Sometimes they’re called “flying dinosaurs.”
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“How greatly have eyewitnesses on Umboi Island helped in our investigations of [ropen] apparent nocturnal Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaurs in Papua New Guinea!” Jonathan David Whitcomb