The most recommended dinosaur books

This book is great for those who want a more exhaustive reference book. This is one of several good dictionaries of dinosaurs and related terms. It is illustrated in black and white, but the text predominates, and as such it serves as a reliable reference for facts about dinosaurs, including many that are not found in mass-produced gift books. I also like that it includes the etymology of entries. It’s a little old (1983), but was awarded several honors, including being a Golden Kite Honor Book, and ALA Notable Book, and a Boston Globe/Horn Book Honor Book.

Vinny the dog is determined to find the perfect job in the big city. But washing dishes in a restaurant doesn’t mean licking the plates, watering the florist’s plants isn’t done by lifting his leg, and guarding the dinosaur bones at the museum doesn’t mean holding them in his teeth! Despite his initial errors, Vinny does find a job that is just right. Filled with humor, this book is also terrific for introducing map reading skills as Vinny crisscrosses the city.

Calvino’s Cosmicomics is perhaps the funniest and most outlandish collections of short stories I’ve ever come across. Think Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time meets Alice in Wonderland. Starting with the Big Bang and charting the entire evolution of the universe and of life on Earth, Calvino’s narrator shape-shifts from a man, to a dinosaur, to a mollusk, a single-cell organism, a subatomic particle, and even a disembodied being. In this linked collection of modern fairy tales, the author displays wild flights of imagination, combining scientific rigor with an uproarious repudiation of logic. Oh, and the narrator’s name is Qfwfq.

This series really brings dinosaurs to life for young readers. One of my children was obsessed with dinos for a while, and this series was so much fun to read together. They are full of interesting facts and tons of action. I highly recommend them as read-alouds for the entire family.

If you want to save the natural world, you have to love it first. And to love it, you have to know it. This gorgeously illustrated picture book is an important introduction. Grow encourages readers to be friends with fifteen common plants—from mint to orchids. Once recognized, and by learning a fascinating bit about them, these plants are no longer strangers, but companions. And that’s the beginning of love. The delightful drawings and fabulous plant factoids call for a read-aloud to younger children, or simply hand the book over to those already reading. This is an act of legacy—we need to bring along that next generation of passionate gardeners who will value our planet.

Although this book is only 16 pages long, it tells a story that could easily have been a novel, which is that she is capable of condensing something so dense down to so few words without making it feel like anything was left out. Here we see a rather fantastical time travel tale, but one that, although at first seems quite light-hearted, ends up being one of the darkest of such tales I've ever read...and the most thought-inducing.

I loved this book and have a very difficult time reviewing it without giving too much away, but if you've got a spare thirty minutes (you know, for you slow readers), I'd highly suggest you pick this one up immediately.

Published in association with the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, this >400-page tome is beautifully and thoughtfully illustrated in color with amply detailed text so that it appeals to broad ages of readers, with younger readers relying more on the illustrations or an older co-reader. Written by a team of paleontologists, it is helpfully organized in 42 bite-sized chapters ranging from overview topics in the beginning to more specific ones toward the end.

Liu is the author of one of my favourite recent works of science fiction, a trilogy called The Three-Body Problem, so deciding to read Of Ants and Dinosaurs felt completely natural. He’s working in a very different mode here, though.

Of Ants and Dinosaurs is a modern fable and tells the story of an Earth where these two vastly different species achieve sentience, build a symbiotic civilisation, and what happens after. It’s a fast read, and you can tell Liu was having fun in the writing. Full of wonderful ideas and perspective-shifting observations, this is an oddball science fiction/fantasy.

Try this one if you liked George Saunders’ Fox 8 or Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle. 

The Century Club prevents the assassination of FDR, but then things get weird.

Warmongering gorillas riding psychic dinosaurs from the dawn of time attack New York City. Now, the pulp heroes of the Century Club must band together, travel to the future, and then to the distant past of Atlantis if they hope to save the world!

Look, having read that description, you already know if these books are for you. They are just as bonkers and amazingly action-packed as they sound. The first book, in particular, is so extremely gripping.

Wendig is an amazing author; I’ve read a chunk of his stuff and have never once been disappointed. 

He loves the whole series. He loves touching and feeling the pages and learning words, such as ‘soft’ and ‘shiny’.

He never tires of reading this book over and over with whoever he can persuade to sit down with him and read it to him, turning the pages and letting him check if it is the right dinosaur or not.