Customer Reviews

Dinosaur Time Book and Tape (I Can Read Book 1)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a poor resource for children who want to learn about dinosaurs, it gives outdated, incorrect information and illustrations to match. I had a copy of this book in elementary school and i kept it as a model of incorrect dino information.

Dinosaur Time Review

The Good:
The focus is to help young children recognize a diverse selection of dinosaurs and correctly pronounce their names. Each has an easy phonetic name pronunciation key along with what they probably ate; meat or plants. Arnold Lobel draws very detailed animals and environments which are realistic enough without being scary. There is no conflict or frightening images beyond showing teeth and claws. There is however, detailed text about who ate who. Example: "Tyrannosaurus ate other dinosaurs."

The book was first published in 1974 and has received updated text and pictures to reflect new names and theories on how the dinosaurs probably lived.

The Bad:
Not all the animals included are dinosaurs. Teratosaurus is a Thecodont, an animal that predated and slightly overlapped with dinosaurs but was not a dinosaur itself. No mention of this is included, and would be overly complicated if it were for the target reader. It seems an odd choice considering there are plenty of actual dinosaurs that could have been included instead.

Conclusion:
This book is not really suited for advanced readers even as a dinosaur information resource. It is clearly meant for first time readers to become engaged in science and reading on their own.

At one point, (page 14) the book and the tape don't match. The book lists Apatosaurus and the narrator says Brontosaurus. Will NOT buy this line of books again.

My son loves this book. He actually is learning to read and about dinosaurs at the same time!!!!!!