Alex+C.

A Science Book Review Alex Carter Period 4 January 10, 2011 JURASSIC PARK

All the blood! The shredded wounds! The stench and slime! How could this happen to a person? Not a backhoe like the guy said brought the man to the clinic - but WHAT?, wondered Dr. Carter. The book, Jurassic Park, by Michael Crichton, was full of people getting atacked, bitten and eaten by dinosaurs. The dinosaurs were cloned to make a park for people to visit and learn about dinosaurs. Unfortunately, they took over the park before it could open and terrorized the people there to inspect the park and the owner’s grandkids. Does anyone make it out alive? I can’t tell you. I liked the movie so I thought I would like the book. The book had way too much detail and it was hard to follow the story. The descriptions of people getting attacked were horrifyingly graphic.

The book is about the science of cloning dinosaurs or called genetic engineering. The author explained that fossils don’t have DNA so there was no dinosaur DNA to use. It was possible that DNA would be preserved if frozen or encased. Bugs like flies that were found in amber had dinosaur DNA in them. They bit the dinosaurs and then got covered in tree sap that turned into amber over time. The scientists removed the DNA and combined it with frog DNA to make the dinosaur. The book was also about the science of dinosaurs because the park was to show people what the dinosaurs were really like when they were alive.

Michael Crichton’s writing style in this book was very graphic, detailed and head-on. He gets right into talking about the dinosaurs so there was no mystery about it for the reader. The book was not funny. It felt like the characters spent the whole book getting chased, running for their lives or ending up dead. This was not like any other books I have read. I usually read mystery books.

Some of the main characters in the book are John Hammond who owned the island and came up with the concept for Jurassic Park. He is an old man who is a dinosaur nut. Alan Grant is a dinosaur expert. Ellie Sattler worked with Alan Grant and was an expert in paleobotany, whatever that is. They come to the island to inspect it. Lex and Tim are the grandkids of John Hammond. There are a lot of other characters that run the park. I did not really like the characters in the book. I thought the author did that since most of them were going to get eaten and you don’t feel so bad about it. But sadly, many of them make it.

In the book, John Hammond seemed like that he was insane. He brought is grandkids to an island with dangerous dinosaurs. He thought the park was solid but it wasn’t and the dinosaurs got out. It was unfortunate that the kids got dragged into this situation by their crazy grandpa. I was glad that did not happen to me. Tim, the grandson, really liked dinosaurs when he came to the island. He and his sister became very afraid of them during this terrible disaster.

The setting of the book is on an island off the coast of Costa Rica. It seems like paradise there. Costa Rica is a real place. Opposed to the cold weather in Illinois, it seems much warmer and more inviting where they are in Costa Rica. There are other places mentioned in the book like New York and Snakewater, Montana. These are also real places.

In the story, there are a bunch of people that start getting bit by strange little lizards in Costa Rica. The stories started getting out about the bites. The insurance company for a new theme park that is going to open on an island near Costa Rica has some experts come to inspect the park. They find out that they were cloning dinosaurs. They think that the dinosaurs are escaping from the island. While touring the park, the power goes out and the dinosaurs get loose and chase the experts and the owner’s grandkids. The owner of the park did not plan correctly and should have planned better for these kinds of things to happen. He should not have brought his grandkids to the island.

Some people who would be interested in reading Jurassic Park are those people who like dinosaurs, like science fiction and either don’t mind or like blood and gore. The gory scenes kind of creeped me out. If you liked the movie, you might like the book.

Overall, I wasn’t crazy about the book and I would not recommend it to a person like me. I thought that the moral behind this story is in a quote that is in the front of the book, “You cannot recall a new form of life,” by Erwin Chargaff, 1972. I give the book two out of five stars.