DK Guide to Dinosaurs

Our 5 year old is dinosaur crazy right now and this was the perfect gift for him. We love the fact that the illustrations place the dinosaurs in various habitats. Our family finds it facinating to see all kinds of dinosarus in action in the forest, the desert, or my personal favorite, threading their way through a traffic jam in NYC! It gives great perspective on size and behavior. The language is a little advanced but that doesn't seem to dissuade our son from loving this book and it's a great way to expand vocabulary. Plus, it's nice to have something that grows with your child a bit. This book will be around in our house for a good while I'm guessing. Note: it's big and not the easiest bedtime read given it's size. It's more of a sit at a table or on the sofa and read kind of book.

I brought this book for my 6yr old son who loves dinosaurs. We were very pleased the pictures jumped off the pages. The details in this book really bring dinosaurs to life.

There are thirty chapters in all, each consisting of two pages with illustrations, graphs and descriptions. For the two-page spread on reconstructing the past, this is done in full-length, so the book must be turned another way for you to view this chapter. My son likes the Feet and Footprints chapter along with the Migration and Killer Instinct. You can see the " Powerful jaws were Tyrannosaurus's main weapon." In the chapter, Types of Dinosaurs it is broken down into the periods of Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous. For the Heads and Skulls chapter it is mentioned, " Suchomimus had a long, narrow head like a crocodile's, and teeth to match." Prehistoric Earth breaks down what each continent was like during the time period, for Triassic Life" The first dinosaurs appeared in the Triassic Period, about 230 million years ago." For the Cretaceous World "The Earth began to take on its present form in the Cretaceous." DK Guide to Dinosaurs is suited for children who are interested in learning everything you could ever want to know about Dinosaurs as well as Adults who are curious about them. If you ever had to write a book report this would be the book to purchase on the subject of Dinosaurs. We have borrowed numerous books over the course of a year on Dinosaurs and I would place this book at the top of the list in gaining knowledge and the vivid illustrations that bring this period to life through the pages of DK Guide to Dinosaurs. My seven-year old says there are many pages in this book and he reads it at leisure a few chapters at a time. You can gain insight into the social life of Dinosaurs, what their favorite food was as well as which ones were carnivores. There are illustrations of dinosaur eggs and the meteors that were thought to destroy the land of the dinosaurs. The most colorful page is the DinoBirds where you see the red and blue feathered DinoTurkey, and wonder whether the Velociraptor was a DinoBird too. There is a lot to absorb in DK Guide to Dinosaurs but not overwhelming if you pick and choose topics of interest first and delve in slowly. Inside the index you can easily find where claws are discussed, nasal bosses, plants, asteroids, volcanoes and snakes to name a few. Dorling Kindersley acknowledged many photographs that were reproduced within DK Guide to Dinosaurs, which would make a great gift for any Dinosaur loving fantatic! For some kids just learning the names of all the Dinosaurs can be a fun challenge. This over sized book would sit nicely on a coffee table and be ideal for reading in a classroom environment a chapter a day.

I know it's geared towards older kids, but we purchased this book for our then 3-year-old, who LOVES dinosaurs (Walking with Dinosaurs is one of his favorite programs). After a year and a half he stills asks me to read it to him. He loves the pictures, and enjoys learning the different facts. No matter how many times we read it, he still finds questions to ask. We chose it because it actually has the correct pronunciation for each dinosaur featured (something many other books didn't have). I would certainly recommend it to any dinosaur lover, regardless of age.

I bought this for my three year old boy last year hoping he would grow into it. As predicted, at first he only paid attention to the impressive photos of the dinosaurs that dominated each two-page section: but a year later, he is drawn to examine the smaller pictures and ask more questions about the animals. This book works so well, I think, because it can appeal to a wide age range of children and has something of interest in it appropriate to every stage of learning.The best educational point about this book IMHO is that the dinosaurs featured are not the familiar ones we see in all the other dinosaur picture books (T rex, Brontosaurus, Triceratops, etc), but the author chooses to focus on less-known types such as Barosaurus, Gigantosaurus, Gastonia and Coelophysis, to name a few. Broader subjects include social behaviors, environmental factors that influenced body types and hide patterns/colors, and speculation on possible fates of the dinosaurs. Supplemented with a more traditional dinosaur picture book, your child will eventually have an uncommon knowledge on dinosaurs.DK Guide to Dinosaurs is also one of the more well-illustrated dinosaur picture books for kids in their grade school years. (Actually, the main "illustrations" are photographs of quality museum models in realistic diorama environments). The unusual design layouts are grounded on black rather than the traditional white, lending a sophisticated look to a subject that is all too often overly textbook-ish in other natural history picture books of this type. More importantly however, the sidebars, timelines and graphical inserts are packed with information and placed in a way that flows well with the main page, leading the eye to points of interest along the page and teaching kids in a more subtle style. This would be a very good choice for children starting grade school and I can foresee many years when it will be used as a reference for reports and other school projects. My only criticism is that the binding will not take continual abuse from the smaller children in the family, so keep it on a higher shelf...