A clueless Detective Dinosaur and his friend Officer Pterodactyl march through three silly stories: a runaway baby apatosaurus proves difficult to find despite her large size, a stray kitten finds a home at the police station, and Detective Dinosaur gets lost in the fog. Themes of friendship, caring, and nonsense are featured in each episode. The illustrations contain plenty of humorous details.

Lost-and-found is the theme of three short chapters in this I Can Read book. Detective Dinosaur helps locate Baby Penny, who steals a taxi, runs over Inez Iguanodon, and then loses her diaper. The detective's next case involves a kitten that he finds outside the station, and in the last case, the lost party is the detective himself. Despite a pronunciation guide at the beginning of the book, the use of real dinosaur names (tyrannosaurus, apatosaurus) may trip a few kids up. But it is the use of the giant creatures (cartoon-ized, of course) that is the draw here. Baby Penny's story is overly long (and why does she have to run over someone, even an anthropomorphized iguanodon?), but the rest of the book, especially the colorful, appealing art, is right on target for the age group. (Reviewed February 1, 1998)