Dig, Dig, Dinosaur

In Dig Dig Dinosaur, we join three little explorers as they search for dinosaurs, hoping to find something really big!  The illustrations are bright and engaging, with only a small amount of text on each page.

I really enjoyed the peekaboo-style holes which show the dinosaur bones on the next page, giving children the chance to guess which dinosaur they think it is by its identifying features - such as 'Three horns' for triceratops. My five-year-old really enjoyed guessing and this book would be great in a preschool, reception or even a KS1 classroom (Ages 5+) as a hook into a Dinosaur topic for this very reason!

After showing us the skeleton for each dinosaur during the 'dig', the following page has an illustration of what the dinosaur is thought to have looked like with a couple of short descriptive facts. The book's use of adjectives will help expand children's vocabulary and, in the classroom, it would be useful for work on expanded noun phrases or introducing descriptive sentences, too.

The final page shows a huge, fold-out diplodocus, which helps to introduce the scale of the dinosaurs in relation to each other.

36 pages / Reviewed by Lizi Backhouse, teacher

Suggested Reading Age 3+

Dig Dig Dinosaur is a special book about dinosaurs which has been created by an expert and leader in palaeontology. Anjali Goswami's passion for all things dinosaurs and fossils absolutely breathes into this book.

Firstly, my toddler and I fell in love with the inside front cover! It a vibrant scene filled with different coloured dinosaurs. It makes the perfect backdrop to stimulate a conversation about the qualities and names of the different dinosaurs we already knew about.

The book begins by providing us with all the tools needed to hunt for dinosaur fossils: brushes, a trowel, hammer, tape measure, pencil, notebook and a map. After dig, dig, digging, we uncover some sharp claws. With the turn of the peek-through page, we discover it's the claws of a velociraptor as we uncover its entire skeleton. We continue digging and discover three big horns. With the turn of the peek-through page, the skeleton of a triceratops is unveiled.

The limited text in this book enabled us to focus on each dinosaur name and the properties that made up their specific skeleton. We could engage in discussions about 'similarities' and 'differences' between the different dinosaurs. This prompted my toddler to verbalise what they could see and pay close attention to details. Become a real life palaeontologist with Dig, Dig, Dinosaur!

Picture book / Reviewed by Jessica Bunney, teacher

Suggested Reading Age 3+