Some of the benefits for the young reader: 1) Is understandable yet stimulating for kids and teens of about 8-14 years old 2) Tells you not WHAT to think, like many other nonfictions, but HOW to think about possibilities 3) By a positive example, invites you to use critical thinking 4) Opens up an exciting new world: persons have seen an apparent living pterosaur 5) Uses sketches, photos, and other images to make things clear 6) Does not indoctrinate but gives you details on what people have seen flying overhead 7) Allows you to come to your own conclusions in this short non-fiction 8) Gives the young reader three of the most important interpretations possible for a sighting 9) Explains the benefits of believing someone who may be telling the truth 10) Compares one sighting report with one or more others, yet it allows you to believe what you will This is nonfiction, true accounts of children and adults who have seen what seem to be living pterosaurs, what many people call "pterodactyls" or "dragons" or "dinosaur birds." This book is written for children and teenagers, but is especially for readers from eight to twelve years old. Six-year-old Patty Carson was walking home with her little brother. Suddenly, a strange creature poked its head up above the nearby tall grass. It had huge wings and a long beak that had many little teeth. Patty froze, watching to see what the animal would do. After a few seconds, it jumped up into the air and flew away.The girl was surprised to see that the creature had no feathers but it did have a long tail. At the end of its tail was something in the shape of a diamond. Patty ran home, a house at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to tell her family about the flying dinosaur, but they did not believe her.Six years later, in 1971, the U.S. Marine Eskin Kuhn was by himself, taking a break near a shoreline at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He was shocked to see two large pterodactyls fly past him, not far away and not too high. He concentrated on their appearance, and within a few minutes he was sketching them with pencil and paper, for Eskin was a talented artist. Forty years later, in 2011, Patty was watching a TV show about a strange flying creature. She thought it was silly and was wondering why anybody would make a show about it. Then she remembered what she had seen when she was a little girl. She searched online and found a site about what Eskin Kuhn had seen in 1971. How surprised she was when she saw the sketch he had drawn. Not only did those two pterodactyls look like what she had seen but it was in the same area of Cuba: Guantanamo Bay.That is when she contacted Jonathan Whitcomb, the author of nonfiction books about living pterosaurs. Seven years later, in 2018, that author wrote this book, "The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur," the first such book he had written for children. Yet this book has much more about these flying creatures than just two stories. It explains why many children and adults have seen these animals around the world and why most people do not believe the eyewitnesses, in countries like the United States. The author did not get that story of the ropen of Umboi Island from second-hand accounts or rumors from missionaries in Papua New Guinea. He personally interviewed three of those native eyewitnesses himself, face-to-face, on his expedition on that tropical island (in 2004). As a forensic videographer, he judged those three eyewitnesses to be completely credible, only after interviewing.
