Jurassic Park

I recall with considerable pleasure, a collector's golden moment, when I was walking up Third Street in Santa Monica, California –long before the touristy Promenade replaced the street traffic. I was approaching Carlisles’ Bookstore, and glanced down at a book that was nestled with a dozen others on a circular promotional rack. The title, black-on-white, simply read, Jurassic Park, and beneath that title, the author’s name, Michael Crichton. I knew, in a flash, what this new publication was all about, and I grabbed it off the rack, already anticipating the joy of reading it. The world of dinosaurs reborn in our modern age! Wow!

I spent the week savoring every word, every sentence, every paragraph, delighting in the unending surprises that awaited me as an island inhabited by the giant reptiles of long ago hosted their rebirth. And, I returned to the great adventure story time and again, over the years, to not only recapture the moments, but to use them to illustrate to my students what you can do with words. Finding a first edition of Jurassic Park was more than a golden moment in time, it is a treasure, captured on-screen as well, and now, deliciously etched on our memories forever.

Background
Jurassic Park is a 1990 science fiction novel written by  Michael Crichton. Often considered a cautionary tale on unconsidered biological tinkering in the same spirit as  Mary Shelley's  Frankenstein, it uses the mathematical concept of  chaos theory and its philosophical implications to explain the collapse of an  amusement park showcasing genetically recreated  dinosaurs. In 1993, Steven Spielberg adapted the book into the blockbuster film Jurassic Park, which won 3 Oscars, 19 other awards, and 15 nominations. The book's sequel, The Lost World (1995), was also adapted by Spielberg into a film in 1997. A third movie, directed by Joe Johnston, was also created that did not relate to either book.