What child wouldn’t love to discover a living dinosaur in the backyard? What if that dinosaur could talk? That’s what happens to Joey and Joan Brown, freckled, red-headed twelve-year-old twins.
On the first few pages of the story, we are made aware of the family Problem. The Problem is money. Mom, a widow, has inherited the Cricket Creek ranch from Uncle Henry. The prospect of living on a ranch seemed like a dream come true – life in the country with chickens, a horse and a cow, and a vegetable garden. Mom would be able to afford to stay home, so the twins wouldn’t need someone else to look after them.
However, the reality is nothing like the dream. The ranch is in the desert. Everything on it is dilapidated, and water has to be carried in buckets from the well for the garden. There is one old horse that no one thought worth bothering with when the others were sold to pay for Uncle Henry’s funeral, and the coyotes have spared only one chicken.
The one thing that is making it possible for the Brown family to remain on the ranch is the money Professor Harris is paying for his board while he is digging for dinosaur bones in the area. Even more exciting, if the professor finds anything valuable on their land, the Browns will get paid for what he takes for the museum.
The children discover the stegosaurus when he emerges from hiding to stomp on a rattlesnake that is threatening them. They are, of course, dumbstruck at the sight of a dinosaur. He reveals his ability to speak when he tells them they should thank him for saving their lives.
The stegosaurus tells them he is shy, stupid, and gets his feelings hurt easily, but also, as the only remaining living dinosaur, he’s quite lonely. Joey and Joan agree to be his friends. He has forgotten his name, so he asks the children to think of a new one for him. They settle on George.
The twins don’t plan to keep George a secret from their mother, but when they try to tell her and the professor about him, they don’t believe it. At first, Joey makes a plan to tell everyone about George and make a fortune by putting him in a zoo. But George makes them promise they won’t tell anyone about him. That doesn’t stop Joey from thinking up other ways George can help them make a fortune.
Since George mainly lives on sagebrush, he helps the Browns clear their property by eating it from around their house. He also helps look for fossils of dinosaur tracks in the rocks and shows them the hot spring where he drinks.
When an airplane runs out of gas and is forced to make an emergency landing near the Brown’s place, George is convinced it is a Pteranodon. He hates Pteranodons because they always make fun of him about his small brain, and he can never think of anything to answer back until it’s too late. So he destroys the plane’s engine with his spikey tail, and the two men who landed in the plane are truly stranded.
Two discoveries make for exciting events: One of the men from the airplane is a thief. Also, George finds a fossil for Joan that he considers a worthless mammal bone, but Professor Harris knows what it really is. The results of these occurrences may not make the Browns’ fortune, exactly, but they will make it possible for them to stay on their ranch. However, the stressful events and the prospect of more people coming to the area make the Shy Stegosaurus feel that it’s time to move on.
Joey and Joan are sad to see him go, but they think they will probably be able to see George again someday.
The Shy Stegosaurus of Cricket Creek, first published in 1955, has been reprinted, along with its sequel The Shy Stegosaurus of Indian Springs, by Purple House Press.
You can learn more about this book at Biblioguides.