“’I’m sorry they are not real,” said Danny ‘It would be nice to play with a real dinosaur.’ ‘And I think it would be nice to lay with you,’ said a voice.” In Danny and the Dinosaur, Hoff uses a boy named Danny and a museum dinosaur to create a book for children. Despite being a book for children, this book communicates some deeper, more profound concepts than originally meet the eye. Out of the many possible ideas to convey, Hoff chooses an untraditional route and tries to convey an adult understanding of appreciation and acceptance, while still exhibiting basic ideas like friendship and love, to the children reading his book using literary techniques such as symbolism and imagery. One concept communicated in this book is friendship, a key theme of any childhood. The overall plot of the story involves Danny going to a museum and looking at all the interesting exhibits available. After perusing some of the other popular displays, he decides that what he likes best is the dinosaur, and wishes that he could play with one. Being a children’s book, the dinosaur comes to life and Danny has a lot of fun with the aforesaid dinosaur and it becomes his friend. He exhibits the traits that a good friend might have, one of those being sacrifice. When he and the dinosaur are laying hide-and-seek …show more content…
He uses symbolism of situations and characters, as well as the images in the book, in order to communicate these understandings to his readers. The passage describing a game of hide and go seek displayed care for a friend and the dinosaur leaving was able to convey the loss of an entity that was a significant part of life. The symbolism and imagery used in this story were an effective way to demonstrate tough emotional controversy a child might face in his or her