I really enjoyed reading this book. I was so excited to share it during our book talk! The book caught my attention because I love learning about dinosaurs and how they lived on Earth. It was very informational and showed plenty of facts about dinosaurs to the reader. The illustrations took up the whole page and were very colorful. ( )

In any library or bookstore, you are apt to find that many kids gravitate to the section on dinosaurs. Thus this book should be considered essential for libraries. The 2018 edition is an update of the original published in 2005. While dinosaurs haven’t changed much in that time (having been extinct for some 65 million years), our knowledge about them has improved a bit.

The book begins with an explanation of why we no longer have dinosaurs on the earth. It then goes into the discoveries of fossil evidence showing the anatomical structures of dinosaurs. The next topic concerns the different groups of dinosaurs, some of which overlap. There are those who walked on four legs versus two legs, and plant eaters versus meat eaters. Some had spikes on their bodies, and some had plates of thick armor. Some had horns, and some had beaks or bills.

The author also explains that birds evolved from a subgroup of meat-eating dinosaurs that had feathers.

The book concludes with an index, and a map showing all the places around the world where dinosaur fossils have been discovered.

The graphics by the author are full of detail and surprisingly bright and colorful. Gibbons labels all the dinosaurs in her pictures with captions and pronunciations, and adds sidebars when appropriate to highlight unusual features of dinosaurs.

Evaluation: Although the text is geared toward intermediate readers, even a younger audience will be drawn to the richly detailed watercolor illustrations. And while dinosaur names are multisyllabic, the pronunciation guides will be useful in teaching the younger kids how to put long words together, and how certain roots in words can provide clues to their meaning. Readers will also learn about taxonomy (the science of naming, defining and classifying groups of biological organisms on the basis of shared characteristics): would they have guessed dinosaurs were reptiles rather than mammals? Perhaps they can suggest their own schemes for identifying life forms. This book would be an excellent addition to a schoolroom science book collection. ( )

Among dinosaur books this wasn't exceptional, but it was enjoyable. I liked the organization which grouped dinosaurs by class, e.g., Theropods, Ceratopsians and period, e.g., Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous. There was solid explanatory material at the beginning and the end. The illustrations were colorful and showed a fine variety of dinosaurs, many of which must have been discovered or named since I was a child; I don't remember them at all. ( )

This book teaches all about dinosaurs and the different types of dinosaurs.
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This book describes the different types of dinosaurs that used to be alive. There are now fossils that are used to continue to discover more about dinosaurs. Appropriate for ages 6 and up. ( )