Many science fiction books written for adults are crossover books—they appeal to young readers who enjoy imaginative tales of exotic adventure, and Bear has written many such books. Dinosaur Summer, however, is written specifically for the young adult market, the same market that its inspiration, Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World (1912), targets, and like The Lost World, it is a crossover book that appeals to grownups as well as young readers. In Dinosaur Summer, Bear treats The Lost World as if it were a historical document, rather than a novel. In Dinosaur Summer, all the characters in The Lost World were real people, and their adventures on an isolated plateau in South America really happened.

Conan Doyle's The Lost World is what was called a "boys' book," a subcategory of young adult literature that is now dead—in fact, The Lost World probably...