Review of the Dinosaur Detectives Handbook

Every book and publication that is put into the Everything Dinosaur shop goes through a review process.  Our dinosaur experts will read it, one of our qualified teachers will assess its child friendliness and educational qualities and perhaps most importantly of all, it will be looked at by children from the age group that it is aimed at to gather their opinions.

The new Dinosaur Detectives Handbook has just gone through this extensive process and came out the other side with a big thumbs up!

This spiral bound, book, designed to look like the sort of field guide you would take on a nature walk is jam packed with facts and information on dinosaurs.  Fifty different dinosaurs are featured.  The book reminded us of the sort of invaluable note book that we use when we are mapping a palaeontological dig site.

The Dinosaur Detectives Handbook

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

Dinosaur Detectives

The book includes maps, stickers, fact files, scale drawings and lots of illustrations and for each dinosaur, readers can make their own notes, add  a picture and tick-off where they might have seen it – on television, in films, books or online.

Thanks to the dinosaur experts and researchers at Everything Dinosaur, most of the prehistoric animals featured in the book can be found on our web log or at Everything Dinosaur’s home web site (hint to all those dinosaur detectives).

To view the Everything Dinosaur web site: Everything Dinosaur.

All in all, the book represents extremely good value.  It is aimed at children aged 5 years and above and it really gets them into the subject.  There is even a handy glossary at the back to explain some of the more difficult words and we love the fact that a pronunciation guide for those long dinosaur names is provided.

A real winner!

The Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs

The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs, a hard-back book, an earlier Dougal Dixon collaboration was a must have book for many dinosaur fans both young and old.  This large volume has been updated and the format changed to produce a superb illustrated guide to Dinosauria in an inexpensive guide book.

This new encyclopedia provides detailed information on 270 different types of dinosaur and takes the reader through the Mesozoic in chronological order, starting with the first dinosaurs that appeared in the Triassic and ends of with the last types of dinosaurs.  The animals are illustrated with watercolour pictures and show the very latest in scientific thinking.

Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs

Dinosaur discoveries from all over the world are reported upon and interestingly for such an inexpensive book, a large amount of detail on each animal is included.  Pleasing to note that faunal stages are included within the main time periods, introducing readers to more of the vocabulary used by real palaeontologists.

Front Cover – The Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs

Picture credit: Manning Partnership

For each main dinosaur family, a number of genera are described and illustrated.  Readers are informed of fossil finds and their location, how the dinosaur was classified, the meaning of the name and who named the animal.  Plus there are lots of interesting and less well known facts on each type of dinosaur illustrated, certainly enough to inform and entertain the most knowledgeable of dinosaur buffs.

To view the range of dinosaur and prehistoric animal themed items available from Everything Dinosaur’s website: Everything Dinosaur.

The water colour illustrations are beautiful and a number of prehistoric scenes are included to give the reader a deeper insight into dinosaur based ecosystems.  The book is compact, about the size of a small telephone directory (160 pages long) and soft-backed making it much lighter and practical then its larger and heavier predecessor.

All in all a top quality dinosaur encyclopedia with an excellent range of dinosaurs featured and lots and lots of up to date information on recent dinosaur discoveries.  A great example of a dinosaur book for children.