We Love Dinosaurs
Lucy Volpin
Nosy Crow
Debut picture book artist, Lucy Volpin celebrates her passion for dinosaurs with a rhyming litany to these extinct creatures be they tall or small, fleet of foot or plodders, herbivores or carnivores, those with enormous roars or snuffly snores …
No matter whether they are spiny, spikey or something other,
these are probably some of the most talked about, most loved by children, of all animals ever.
Rendered in watercolour and pencil, the dinosaurs herein are sure to delight young addicts and should also create some new enthusiasts among pre-schoolers who will enjoy pointing out their various attributes and finding the descriptive words in the brief text.
Indeed slightly older children will likely want to have a go at reading the whole thing for themselves once they’ve heard it read aloud a couple of times.
Touch & Explore Dinosaurs
Illustrated by Ninie
Twirl Books
Dinosaur loving seems to start at a very early age and here’s a board book catering for pre-schoolers who can explore its contents and enjoy a multisensory experience by using their fingers (to feel the numerous textures inset into the die-cut shapes of various parts of the dinosaurs’ anatomies) – even the title is touchy-feely; by looking closely at the details in some of the illustrations or merely, by enjoying the bright colours of these little beauties;
(I like the playful hues used here accompanying the ‘… today no one knows what colours our skins were.’) and perhaps even creating ROARS and dinosaur shapes with their own bodies.
They can also find out about the smallest known dinosaurs,
learn something about dinosaur diet, how dinosaurs reproduced, how they came to an end, as well as meeting one or two species close up: Diplodocus the gentle giant – (did you know this plant eater was larger than three elephants?); Triceratops with its frilled neck and small-headed Stegosaurus, and Microraptor with large wings that were used for gliding.
There’s a fair bit of information embedded in this book, much of which will be absorbed with little effort by those ‘littles’ who peruse its pages Did you know a Maiasaurus makes a small crater in which to lay its eggs? I certainly didn’t.
First person, direct language is used to convey the facts so that it appears readers are being addressed by the various dinosaurs, adding to the fun. And Ninie’s digitally rendered artwork with those die-cut touchy-feely bodies almost jumps off the pages. It’s fortunate this board book is sturdily bound to stand up to the heavy handling it’s likely to receive from enthusiastic early years readers.
Red Reading Hub - Jillrbennett's Reviews of Children's Books 