Animal Planet’s Dinosaurs! by Lori Stein is a great way to teach kids all about dinosaurs, not that you really need too. Kids often know more about the titanic dragons of yester-millenia better than adults. Sadly, a love for dinosaurs seems to lose its lustre as we grow older. Not me, thankfully, and I’ve passed that on to my cublings. Like the Animal Planet: Unusual, etc Animals, we read this as a family. Afterwards, I pulled out my own fossil and artefact collection and we discussed the fossils. Half of the young ones were horrified by the coprolites. The others were fascinated. Now they want to go fossil hunting…

This book is stuffed with all kinds of great information, and plenty of illustrations. There’s a glossary/pronunciation guide in the back to help with the Latin oriented names. I love that this book prompted intellectual interest and discussion. The older cublings even took some of our more ‘adult’ books on dinosaurs to read. Our extended family has a very large library, with a fairly extensive natural history section.

I would have liked to have seen greater expansion in each of the sections. I believe a bit more detail would not be amiss. Overall, though, this was a good first look book, and a great addition to any kid’s library.
???? Highly recommended, especially for kids who are wild about dinosaurs, and natural history. Also as an educational tool for middle-graders.