THE LITTLEST DINOSAUR
by Michael Foreman
(MUSIC)
Long, long ago when the world was young and everything was new,
a mother dinosaur sat proudly amongst her
eggs.
One by one, the eggs began to crack, and baby dinosaurs poked their heads out into the sunshine.
All except one.
The mother worried and fussed about it, and kept it warm and sang songs to it.
But still the egg didn't crack.
The neighbours came with help and advice.
"Make it warmer," they said.
"Keep it cool," they suggested.
The mother was very loving and lay beside the egg all the time.
She breathed on it to keep it warm or fanned
it with banana leaves to cool it down.
But still the egg didn't crack.
The father dinosaur wanted to break the egg open, but the mother said,
"No. It will happen when the baby is ready, not before."
Then, one day, the father became so tired of looking after all the other young dinosaurs
while the mother fussed over the egg, that he put his face very close to the egg and shouted.
"Come on, egg!  Do something!"
The egg shook.
The egg wobbled, and then began to crack.
A little crack at first, then a big crack, and the shell broke in two.
The baby dinosaur blinked in the sunlight.
The father dinosaur gasped.
Mother dinosaur gasped.
All the young dinosaurs and all the neighbours gasped.
They had never seen such a tiny baby.
"That's the littlest dinosaur I have ever seen," said the father.
"You're no bigger than a dinosaur's toe!"
The neighbours began to giggle.
"Oh! He may be tiny, but he's very special to me,"
cried Mother dinosaur and scooped the baby up and kissed his tiny face.
Days and weeks passed, and no matter how much food Mother gave the baby dinosaur, he didn't grow any bigger.
The littlest dinosaur was sad because he was too small to join in with his big brothers and sisters when they played.
And then there was the worry about being trodden on by his huge neighbours.
The only place that the littlest dinosaur felt safe was high on a hill.
There he could sit and look down on the forest.
It made him feel bigger.
One day, far away on another hill, he saw another dinosaur.
It was a Long Neck.
Even at that distance, he looked sad.
The littlest dinosaur wondered how a dinosaur that big could possibly be sad.
When the rainy season began, the big dinosaurs squelched and rolled in the mud.
But not the littlest dinosaur.
He hated the mud.
He was always getting stuck in the other dinosaurs' big muddy footprints and having to yell,
"Help! Get me out of here!"
Then, one day, the father dinosaur got stuck.
He was squelching and rolling in the deep mud at the edge of the river.
But when he tried to get out he couldn't.
The more he struggled, the more he got stuck.
"Get me out of here!: he yelled.
Mother tried to help, but she got stuck.
The neighbours tried to help, and they got stuck.
The littlest dinosaur's brothers and sisters waded in and they got stuck, too.
"Get us out of here!" they all yelled.
The littlest dinosaur wished and wished that he was bigger.
Big enough to rescue them.
"You must go for help," cried the mother dinosaur
But who could help?
wondered the littlest dinosaur.
Then he remembered the Long Neck.
The littlest dinosaur was scared as he stepped
from the riverbank on to a water lily leaf.
It tipped and dipped, but didn't sink.
One leaf at a time, he wibbled and wobbled his way across the river,
then ran through the forest and climbed the hill, slipping and sliding, sliding and slipping, until he got to the top.
There he was, the Long Neck.
He looked down at the littlest dinosaur.
"Help me, please," the littlest dinosaur cried.
"My family are stuck in the river and the water is rising fast!"
The Long Neck picked him up and, with great 
long strides, was soon down the hill,
through the forest and at the riverbank.
He stretched his neck across the river and
began pushing and pulling the sinking dinosaurs out,
until one by one they were all safe on the shore.
"Thank you!" Father dinosaur shouted as he waved to the Long Neck.
"And as for you," he said, picking up the littlest dinosaur, "you may be the size of a bug,
but you have the brave heart of a dinosaur one hundred times your size."
And he kissed him on his tiny nose.
When the rains stopped and the river was not so wide, the littlest dinosaur went to visit the Long Neck again.
He no longer looked so sad.
"I thought I was too big and clumsy to do anything useful," he said, "but now I know that's not true."
And I thought I was too small to do anything at all," laughed the littlest dinosaur.
They sat together on the hill, the biggest
and the littlest, and now, the greatest of friends.
