Discovering dinosaurs by Simon Chapman
Ill. by Rudolf Farkus and Mike Love. Bloomsbury, 2016. ISBN
9781408194614
(Age: 7+) Highly recommended. Dinosaurs, Non fiction, Fossils. The
spectacularly ferocious image of a Tyrannosaurus Rex on the front
cover is a winning invitation to this book with lift the flaps and
pop ups about the perennial favourite topic, dinosaurs. I can't
imagine too many people, kids and adults alike, moving past this
book on the shelf. I picked it up immediately, reveling in the feel
of this over-sized hard cover book and its thick pages revealing a
host of hidden things telling me more about dinosaurs than I had
read for a while.
Any good non fiction book is armed with a contents page, index and
glossary and these, apart from an index are offered in this book,
teaching young readers how to access information.
An introduction by Simon Chapman gives us the background and readers
will love the 'boys own adventure' lifestyle he seems to lead.
The first double page introduces the reader to the time periods
under discussion, Triassic, and the lift out flaps on each page
reveal the Jurassic and Late Cretaceous periods, placed over a map
of the world. Each double page thereafter reveals a different area
of the world and the dinosaurs particular to that area. So the first
page introduces the reader to where and when the dinosaurs first
appeared on earth, followed by the velociraptor, amongst many
others. Each double page tells us about the dinosaur with a fact box
of all those curious bits of information young children absorb. Some
pages have full page illustrations, some have many smaller pictures,
some pages have lift the flaps and some have pop outs. It all leads
to the last pages, one of which talks about their extinction while
the next tells us about fossils and what they show us. All in all a
fascinating addition to the range of books about dinosaurs which I
am sure will be well read. A forward thinking teacher, parent or
librarian might like to show kids how to use it carefully.
Fran Knight