bigger, but not nicer Don Lessem, also known as "Dino Don," tells the story of the dinosaur's rise and fall in Dinosaur Worlds. This compendium of up-to-date information describes the habitats and feeding habits of countless kinds of dinosaurs. Each chapter focuses on a different location; "Fact File" sidebars provide further information about each site. The book announces the largest dinosaur to be the Argentinosaurus, not the Ultrasaurus (or the Brontosaurus, for those who are really behind the times); the largest meat-eater was the Giganotosaurus, not Tyrannosaurus rex.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From School Library Journal
Grade 5 Up-Many books on dinosaurs get caught up in cataloging the creatures and their features and forget to fit them into an ecological niche. Lessem's endeavor is brilliant because it describes dinosaurs by integrating them into their environment, which includes climate, geology, fauna and flora, and the continent on which they lived, thus connecting the animal to its time and place. Few other books on the topic fill in the full picture so well. Lessem even includes a "Then" and "Now" feature to show readers that the deserts and cliffs where dinosaur bones are found today were often jungles and oceans in prehistoric times. The book is organized into large chapters that investigate dinosaur finds on all continents. Readers are treated with vivid portraits of how raptors hunted 125 million years ago in what is now Utah, and how in the skies 200 million years ago, pterosaurs cruised over an Antarctica with a climate more like the American Northwest. The book is packed with good information for reports, and includes an excellent list for further reading. But it's also great for browsing. This is in part due to its large size, which accommodates excellent full-color artwork that truly captures the towering necks of sauropods or the action-packed drama of a carnivore tracking down a meal. This portrait of the Earth's past life is a masterpiece.
Cathryn A. Camper, Minneapolis Public Library
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
See all Editorial Reviews
(
