The Seas of Doom. Steve Cole

Astrosaurs is a series of books about dinosaurs who are astronauts. They have lots of adventures flying around space. The books are a very popular British series for boys who are relatively new to reading chapter books alone. Our British copies are about 11 chapters and 120 pages with large easily legible print and smallish illustrations on most pages. My son is 7 and he has read every book in the series many times. He can easily read a book in one sitting which is what he likes to do. He loves these books. They wouldn't be my choice to read aloud but are ideal self-read chapter books for this age group. I highly recommend this series of books for boys ages 6-10.

My son (10) isn't very good at reading, so I read these Astrosaurs books to him at bedtime. He really enjoyed them and so we have bought all of the series (8 books at present) to encourage him to like books as much as his Playstation 2, TV and DVD's. Most books we have are shared with his 12 year old sister, so he appreciated a good book aimed at young boys. The sci-fi stories are quite good (we are Dr Who, StarWars, Dinotopia, and New Captain Scarlet fans) and you get the boys top favourite (dinosaurs) thrown in as well. The only problem with them is that Steve Cole can't write them quick enough The series follows the space adventures of a troupe of vegetarian dinosaurs (they escaped the meteor hit 50 million years ago by leaving Earth in spaceships). Captain Teggs and his crew, Gypsy, Arx and Iggy are no ordinary dinosaurs - they are Astrosaurs! They fly through space in the Dinosaur Space Service starship, theDSS Sauropod, keeping the peace in the vegetarian sector of the Jurassic Quadrant. They also patrol the neutral VegMeat zone to defend against the inhabitants from the notorious Carnivore Sector. Plus they are explorers, who boldly go where no fern chewing reptile has boldly gone before. In this book Teggs and Gipsy have been sent to a water planet where a huge monster has been attacking the local fish factories. They have to travel down to the bottom of the sea to investigate, and they soon come under attack themselves. So the book it is suitably tense in places for little ones. This is the third book of the excellent series. In order the books are Riddle of the raptors, The hatching horror, The seas of doom, The mind swap menace, The skies of fear, The space ghosts, Day of the dino-driods, and The terror bird trap. They are best read in order. My son says 'Like the other books it was cool, I liked the characters and the pictures (the reading books are filled many good line drawing illustrations). I also liked the cut-out cards at the front' (in our UK version, probably not present in the US book)". I would think the books would suit any pre-teen boy older than four, who appreciates space travel (probably up to age 12). I also enjoyed reading them out loud. There are surprisingly few good books aimed squarely at young boys about, so highly recommended. Also try 'The tentacled terror' plus the 'Horrid Henry', 'Seriously silly stories' and the US 'Captain Underpants' series of books.