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My Back Pages #03: Dilly The Dinosaur

My Back Pages is what I would call an irregular feature that I’ve got going here. Essentially, every now and then, I dig out a book from my old shelves and my childhood to examine it with a new perspective and more than a hint of nostalgia. I have no idea why I’m doing this, and what I’ll end up with, but I figured that it might be slightly interesting. More interesting than what usually happens here anyway. Yes, it takes its name from the Dylan song, and yes, this is a standard introduction. You can read more about it from the introductory page I’ve written for it.

A Block Of Information

Title: Dilly The Dinosaur
Author: Tony Bradman
Illustrator: Susan Hellard
Other folks: No other folks
Publisher: Dean
First publication: First edition, though separate volumes published in 1986 and 1987
Edition: 1992, 0603550533

World’s Naughtiest Dinosaur

On the cover, it says: “Dilly the Dinosaur: Contains the first four books about the world’s naughtiest dinosaur”. In a corner, it also proudly says in a little yellow triangle: “16 fun stories”. And that really is the premise of this collection of very short stories. It seems to conveniently forget that there aren’t actually many dinosaurs left in the world, so ‘world’s naughtiest dinosaur’ isn’t really anything to be proud of.

And don’t ask me why he wears that dreadful purple-and-white chessboard.

All The Names

Here’s the title page. You’ll notice an Easter-specific chop that says “You’re Egg-stra Special”, with a little troll creature underneath it dragging an egg along, no doubt to the kitchen. I can’t remember what the troll creature is called, though I’m sure someone will be able to remind me.

I can’t remember who stamped it there. I tended also to stamp my name onto the books I owned. Don’t ask me why. Nowadays I always think I should inscribe my book, like you always imagine Samuel Beckett or T.S. Eliot doing on their books, a name and a date and a place, but my handwriting is awful.

Family Matters

As I look at it now, I can’t help but remember that I used to love this book. Every story is almost exactly the same thing, really. It’s structured in roughly the same way, has the same plot elements, and even uses some of the same devices time and time again, and yet I could keep going back to it time and time again. I was very young when I was reading this. Must have been somewhere in the period of about six to nine.

The main draw, now that I look back at it, was that Dilly belonged to a family that was exactly like mine. Each story is narrated by his elder sister. Wait, can’t remember her name… Hang on… Hang on… Dorla! Yes, that’s it! (I was about to say Dora, actually, but hey, I was close.) So it’s kind of a Dilly the naughty kid brother, Dorla the wiser and constantly frustrated elder sister, and the two parents dynamic that you find in much of children’s fiction. And that’s almost precisely my family. Except I hope I wasn’t quite as irritating.

Ultra-special, 150-mile-per-hour super-scream

In any case, the one thing that I still remember is Dilly’s scream. You see, every story unfolds in the same way. There’s some object, something that Dilly has to deal with. Sometimes this is a day out, sometimes it’s a rainy day, sometimes it’s the dentist’s. Something about this will make Dilly extremely upset, and there he unleashes his “ultra-special 150-mile-per-hour super-scream”.

I should tell u that I did some calculations and this is actually 67.056 metres per second. That’s a ridiculously slow scream. I’m not even sure anyone can hear it. I think dinosaurs just have very slow ears.

(Of course I didn’t worry about this back then.) The parents will get cross, of course. Dorla will also get exasperated because Dilly is just unreasonable and impossible to understand. And then something will happen and Dilly will realise, hey, that’s not so bad after all, and he’ll change a little and everyone will be happy.

That’s a basic Dilly story outline.

Drawing Dinosaurs

Illustrations in this book are done by Susan Hellard, and I just want to say that although I don’t like her smug Dilly very much (like the one on the cover), sometimes she draws a very cute Dilly, like this one, where he has the dinosaur measles or something. (I realise I shouldn’t have taken these at an angle, but ah, what the hey.)

Or this one, where it’s just a little Dilly sitting there.

Dinosaur!

I loved dinosaurs. I still do. I think it has more to do with my numerous non-fiction dinosaur books than with Dilly. Still, looking back now, I have to admit that the idea of a nice happy dinosaur family must have fuelled the imagination somewhat. I think it helped to give me some sort of perspective on it, that dinosaurs weren’t so far removed from us, even if they had sharp teeth and huge feet. It made it easier to imagine clusters of dinosaurs, living out their lives.

Of course, the short story probably got to me at about this time. While I’ve been writing less and less short fiction, there’s nothing I quite love in the way I love a good short.

Last Words

I don’t think you can get the same book any more, that is to say, the same volume collecting the same four books. (There is a book with the same title, but that’s actually just the first book in the series, I think, so it’s four stories, and is in fact collected in mine.) That said, Dilly is still alive and well, with spruced up covers and all that fancy stuff. For example: [via Amazon]

A while ago, I started building up a personal library of sorts. I became very protective of my books for a period of time. I was sad when they turned yellow, was upset when an accident happened, and so on. I think it was just a period of silliness. While I don’t like books getting seriously damaged, and believe in taking good care of them, it also seems to me that sometimes, the blunt corners and yellowed pages have their place on my shelf.

There’s a tear in one of the pages of Dilly The Dinosaur. I don’t even remember how it got there.

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© 2009 a modest odyssey.