{"id":191110,"date":"2026-05-13T11:36:06","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T11:36:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/191110\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T11:36:06","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T11:36:06","slug":"lehigh-valley-child-author-marks-national-dinosaur-day-with-book-signing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/191110\/","title":{"rendered":"Lehigh Valley child author marks National Dinosaur Day with book signing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Five years ago, 8-year-old Owen Oselkin and his siblings needed pandemic entertainment, and the family turned to the arts, with Owen leveraging his piano skills to craft a song about dinosaurs.<\/p>\n

Set to the tune of \u201cO Christmas Tree,\u201d the \u201cOh Dinosaur, Oh Dinosaur\u201d song attempted to answer a pressing question: Where did all the dinosaurs go?<\/p>\n

Now the song has been turned into a book, one whose plot explores the surprising ties between ancient dinosaurs and modern-day poultry. Owen will be on hand from 5 to 8 p.m. Friday at the Lehigh Valley Mall\u2019s Barnes & Noble to help the community celebrate National Dinosaur Day by signing copies of his book.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think they\u2019re interesting,\u201d Owen said of dinosaurs, \u201cbecause they live for a long time.\u201d He said the T-rex is his favorite.<\/p>\n

Owen\u2019s mother, Amy, said his room is covered in dinosaur toys and the family is a fan of the Jurassic Park franchise.<\/p>\n

Attendees at the book signing may also get a glimpse of the author at a piano. Owen got an assist from his piano teacher when he was working to put the song to music, and he rehearsed it with his older brother, Dylan.<\/p>\n

Dylan, 12, said Owen is \u201cdefinitely passionate about dinosaurs\u201d and was \u201creally committed\u201d to turning the song into a book. Dylan also said the final product is \u201cgood poetry\u201d with a solid rhyme scheme.<\/p>\n

The family used the platform Reedsy<\/a> to connect with an England-based designer, Terry Sambridge, who helped turn Owen\u2019s sketches into book illustrations.<\/p>\n

Owen\u2019s father, Martin, said communicating with Sambridge required Owen to show \u201cso much dedication\u201d \u2014 enough to get up early, skip TV time and instead log in to the family laptop to communicate across time zones with his collaborator.<\/p>\n

Friday will be Owen\u2019s second book signing, having already been hosted by the Center Valley Barnes & Noble for an April 19 event.<\/p>\n

In addition to partnering with Barnes & Noble, the family has donated signed copies to local libraries, including Owen\u2019s own school, Cetronia Elementary.<\/p>\n

Amy Oselkin said she hopes the experience will inspire other kids to create their own books. That inspiration could strike first at home, as younger sister Danika, 5, says she\u2019d also like to write a book someday.<\/p>\n

As for Owen, he\u2019s already brainstorming a sequel. \u201cO Bird, O Bird,\u201d anyone?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Five years ago, 8-year-old Owen Oselkin and his siblings needed pandemic entertainment, and the family turned to the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":191111,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120,227,433,182,139,28,664,432,1654],"class_list":["post-191110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-education","tag-lehigh-county","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-south-whitehall-township","tag-top-stories-tmc","tag-whitehall-township"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191110\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/191111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}