Care & Feeding of Dinosaurs

Unfortunately this book doesn't seek to provide readers with the newest and most cutting edge discoveries. What it does do is provide some of the basic facts in an easy to understand format, and portrays dinosaurs as living, breathing, and most importantly, realistic creatures. It explains, for instance, that understanding a dinosaur's needs and emotions would be a lot different than understanding a dog or cat, because dinosaurs had very little facial muscle and would have looked pretty much the same most of the time. Or the fact that house training a dinosaur might be difficult, since they aren't as smart as dogs and cats. Although it seems basic, the information it provides does a lot to bring dinosaurs to life for a kid--and the info and illustrations are funny, too. A lot of the book's charm is this sense of "what-if-ness". Encyclopedia formats only go so far; children are imaginative by nature, and this book fits that sense of imagination like a glove. The illustrations are also above and beyond the standards typical for children's dinosaur books. The style is a bit cartoony, yes, but if you compare the illustrations to, say, the professional skeletal restorations as drawn by Gregory S. Paul, or the actual fossils, they are actually quite accurate-and this coming from someone who has studied dinosaurs, and drawn them profusely, for the past thirteen years. Aside from only one or two minor points, they are spotless. And gorgeous. The preview image is unfortunately quite washed out and doesn't do the book justice, but all the illustrations inside the book and on both covers are vivid with gorgeous color.

Tim Bradley has done an excellent job of integrating fun and science. His artwork is whimsical and scientifically accurate - my favorite is the Velociraptor on the couch! A great way to get your kids to learn something while they are having fun.

I found this book to be very informative and entertaining. My eight year old loves the illustrations and finds the text easy to read and comprehend. It is an amusing way to explain facts about dinosaurs without the typical boring format. I would recommend this book to any parent who has a child fascinated with dinosaurs.

"The Care and Feeding of Dinosaurs" takes a refreshing and novel approach to explaining some of the basics about dinosaurs to children of all ages. What better way to get kids involved and really THINKING about the subject than to have them imagine that they actually had a dinosaur for a pet. Perhaps the best part about this book is the humility expressed by its author. Too many times we hear learned paleontologists ramble on and on about the Mesozoic in absolutes... "T'rex was thus and so... Triceratops looked like this..." Rarely do we hear a dinosaur writer use the words "probably, perhaps, most likely." This book invites the reader (young and old) to do a little imagining on their own. My only complaint was that there wasn't more to read. Perhaps we have a sequel to look forward to in the near future.