A Review of the Dinosaur Dictionary (Book Review)

Many parents and guardians are keen to encourage reading and one way to motivate a child to read more is to provide them with books that they enjoy about subjects they are interested in.  Within the United Kingdom many primary schools are moving towards a more creative curriculum and dinosaurs are becoming increasingly popular with teachers and teaching assistants as a term topic.  Finding suitable reading materials to encourage young children to learn about science as well as to help develop their reading skills can be difficult.  However, with the advent of this child-friendly dinosaur dictionary we think this book is certainly a step in the right direction.

Dinosaur Dictionary

The Dinosaur Dictionary is aimed at children from four years and upwards and provides young palaeontologists with a handy dinosaur A-Z!  It is a colourful, child’s dictionary complete with a well thought out pronunciation guide to help children (and their parents), to pronounce the many complicated and lengthy prehistoric animal names contained in the sixty four pages of this book.

Dinosaur Dictionary – A Child-Friendly Dinosauria A-Z

Suitable for children aged 4 and over.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

There are over one hundred prehistoric animals and dinosaurs featured in the book, the vast majority from the Mesozoic Epoch, which is generally regarded as the “Age of Reptiles”.

The dictionary starts with the Late Cretaceous titanosaur known as Alamosaurus.  This long-necked dinosaur that lived at the same time as Tyrannosaurus rex could well turn out to be one of the largest land living animals of all time, if recent fossil finds prove conclusive regarding this huge, herbivore’s size.  The dictionary provides a brief description of this dinosaur, and in common with all the other entries there is a colourful illustration of the creature and a black and white scale drawing showing size.  Each entry has plenty of facts about the particular animal being discussed and all the famous dinosaurs as well as some of the more unusual reptiles that shared their prehistoric world are included.

To view Everything Dinosaur’s range of dinosaur themed toys and gifts: Dinosaur and Prehistoric Animal Toys and Gifts.

Zephyrosaurus

The last dinosaur listed is Zephyrosaurus (hypsilophodontid dinosaur), one of the lesser known dinosaurs from the North American Cretaceous.  The book also includes a handy glossary and an short chapter introducing the Dinosauria, outlining when they lived and how they evolved.  The text is large and has been carefully compiled to enable young children to read the facts and figures about these prehistoric creatures with ease, there might be the odd scientific errata but the text and design of this book is aimed at delighting young dinosaur fans and helping them with their reading and it is likely that this publication will achieve these aims.

This young persons book is an excellent prehistoric animal A-Z!  A colourful dinosaur dictionary, complete with pronunciation guide, making sixty-four pages From Alamosaurus to Zephyrosaurus.  In summary,  a handy, well-illustrated guide to over one hundred dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals.

One of the Horned Dinosaurs Illustrated in this Dinosaur Book

Encouraging young people with their reading.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

A typical entry from the Dinosaur Dictionary is shown above, the text is large and encourages reading in young people, there are lots of facts and each prehistoric animal featured is illustrated.

Fun Fact!

There are more prehistoric animals represented under the letter “C” than under any other letter in the Dinosaur Dictionary.