Do You Love Dinosaurs?

Vibrant, animated and a fantastic addition for any dinosaur fan! Do you love Dinosaurs? jumps off the shelf and is aimed at a broad age range of dinosaur fans. Personally, I absolutely loved it and found out so much about dinosaurs. This book is fantastic for sharing with your child; together you can read and learn interesting new facts, the names, sizes, teeth and many more fascinating interesting facts about your favourite dinosaur or discovering new types.

My son (age 7) and I loved learning the names of the dinosaurs and reading all the unusual information about each type of dinosaur. The names used are not made childish, this book uses the correct palaeontologist term for each dinosaur, so be prepared to sound out a few. This book, despite on first glance looking like a picture book, is in fact a non-fiction book. Filled with facts throughout, you can return to it again and again. The book is separated into sections to make it easy to return to too, later - hunters, giants, veggies, armoured, fossils – to name but a few.

The amazing, bright colour pallet, big illustrations and easy to read layout make this book easily accessible to read independently or to share with your child. Each page is filled with an array of images, illustrated in a cartoon style and yet accurately depicting the style, size and movement of each dinosaur. I absolutely love this book and we have returned to it as a family numerous times.

It would also suit an early year’s classroom environment or an excellent teaching resource. I can imagine this book being very popular in the class library as smaller children are not expected to be excellent readers to enjoy it, yet more advanced readers will similarly take delight in its pages. If you have a dinosaur fan in the family, buy this book!

Picture book / Reviewed by Joanna Hewish, teacher

Suggested Reading Age 3+

Dinosaur books are usually always a winner so I had high hopes for this, and wasn't disappointed. Written by Matt Robinson, author of the award winning Do you Love Bugs?, it follows a similar style of bright, cartoony illustrations and a chatty style of writing. The text is clearly laid out and each page is filled with longer pieces of text that will challenge a Year 2 reader and shorter facts that a developing reader can easily decode and quickly gain something from.

The book includes all the old favourite dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus Rex and Diplodocus but also some less well-known ones more recently discovered, such as the Dreadnoughtus. Pages are arranged by type, so if you want to know which dinosaurs were herbivore then turn to 'Leaf Loving Veggies'. Who were the fastest? Check out 'Dino Sports Day' for a quick guide.

If I had one criticism it would be that there is no help with pronunciation of the names. I think inclusion of a phonetic breakdown of each one, somewhere in the text, would have been helpful. I'm still not entirely sure if Patagotitan is said 'pat-a-go-titan' or 'pat-a-go-shun' but this is only a small point, and not one that detracts overall from the quality of this book.

Suitable for use in school to support a dinosaur topic for Years 1 to 4, for a Year 2 reading book or a gift for a dinosaur mad youngster, this book will surely become a firm favourite.

Picture book / Reviewed by Wendy Kelly, teacher

Suggested Reading Age 5+