Dinosaur Tracks (Let's-Read-and-Find-Out Science 2) [Hardcover]

Kathleen Weidner Zoehfeld (Author), Lucia Washburn (Illustrator)

Book Description

Age Level: 5 and up | Grade Level: K and up | Series: Let's-Read-and-Find-Out Science 2

Have you ever wanted to take the same steps as a dinosaur or see how your foot compares to that of a Tyrannosaurus rex? Amazingly, the tracks or footprints of dinosaurs that walked on the earth millions of years ago can still be seen today! Read and find out about the astonishing discoveries scientists have made just from the footprint of a dinosaur.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

In this volume in the Let's-Read-and-Find-Out Science series, Zoehfeld builds on children's fascination with dinosaurs by providing technical details about fossil tracks, including information about how they were formed and how some remained, buried underground for millions of years until the soil wore away to reveal them. The clear text is illustrated with informal, colorful spreads of kids at play on the beach where millions of years earlier dinosaurs may have "splooshed through gloppy mud . . . [leaving] footprints behind them." It may be hard for kids to imagine a time span of more than 65 million years, but Zoehfeld brings perspective ("millions of years before any people or any moose or any elephants ever lived"), and, with adult help, elementary-school readers will be able to handle the fascinating facts about the size of the tracks and what the tracks reveal about the dinosaurs that made them. Link this to the titles in the "Read-alikes: Bone Hunters!" on p.62. Hazel Rochman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author

Kathleen Weidner Zoehfeld is the award-winning author of more than sixty books, including Dinosaur Tracks, "a great choice for even the most discriminating dinophiles" (School Library Journal); Did Dinosaurs Have Feathers?, a Children's Book of the Month Club selection described as "fascinating" by Kirkus Reviews; and Dinosaurs Big and Small, a 2003 Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Best Book Award winner. When she's not reading, researching, writing, or editing, Kathleen loves to spend her free time exploring, doing fieldwork, and preparing fossils in the laboratory for her local natural history museums. She lives in Berkeley, California.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 5 and up
  
• Hardcover: 40 pages
• Publisher: Collins; 1 edition (April 3, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060290242
• ISBN-13: 978-0060290245
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 10.3 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,333,449 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Kathleen Weidner Zoehfeld is the award-winning author of more than sixty books for children, including DINOSAUR TRACKS, "a great choice for even the most discriminating dinophiles" (School Library Journal); DID DINOSAURS HAVE FEATHERS?, a Children's Book of the Month Club selection, described as "fascinating" by Kirkus Reviews; and DINOSAURS BIG AND SMALL, a 2003 Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Best Book Award winner.

When she's not reading, researching, writing, or editing, Kathleen loves to spend her free time exploring, doing fieldwork, and preparing fossils for her local natural history museums.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Any child who is crazy about dinosaurs should take a look at this book!, June 30, 2009

By 

D. Fowler "Dragonfly77" (Vermont) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Dinosaur Tracks (Let's-Read-and-Find-Out Science 2) (Hardcover)

If you live in the country you have probably seen many different kinds of animals tracks and wondered what they were. If you go to the beach, it's very easy to see tracks you or others make. Often you can see bird tracks that pepper the moist sand. Everywhere you go you can see tracks that are made from "people and animals [who] are walking, running, hopping, and jumping." In the age of the dinosaurs those creatures were doing the same things and leaving their tracks behind. Weather conditions will quickly erase many footprints, but some "tracks become fossilized."

This book describes and illustrates the fascinating process whereby a simple dinosaur track could become a fossil. The fossilized track would gradually become hidden under layers of earth and would wait to be discovered millions of years later when the process reversed itself and the track surfaced. In the 1830s a man named Edward Hitchcock was amazed by the tracks he saw and began to "collect and study tracks." He became what is now called an ichnologist. This book talks about the types of tracks the many different types of dinosaurs left behind, what their tracks looked like, how many of them walked, the size of their tracks, their trackways (these tell us a lot about dinosaurs), people who have discovered tracks and who some of the dinosaurs ancestors were.

Any child who is crazy about dinosaurs should take a look at this book as he or she will have a better understanding of how and why scientists came to the conclusions they had about the origins of dinosaurs, what they did, what they looked like and many more interesting tidbits. The illustrations, especially the herd of sauropods in the centerfold, are very appealing and will thrill the dino fan. In the back of the book is a recipe for a fun experiment in which the reader can make their own "fossil footprints or handprints."