From gigantic plant eaters to terrifying carnivores, dinosaurs and the long-lost worlds they inhabited capture the imaginations of children everywhere. Because it's such a popular topic, there are vast numbers of dinosaur books for kids out there. Our Children’s Editor talked to Daniel (age 6) and Caleb (age 7), two young dinosaur book enthusiasts, to find out which ones they have really enjoyed, and would like to recommend to other kids their age and younger.
No. This one is my brother’s. He’s five. It says about mostly everything the dinosaurs had, but not all the things and dinosaur features. My absolute favourite book has got more pages. This one has one dinosaur on one page, just one big one, with lots of facts on it.
Which is your absolute favourite dinosaur book?
Dinosaurs: A Children’s Encyclopedia. It’s got a big eye on the cover. It’s got like three hundred pages. It’s got lots of dinosaurs and small living reptiles that lived along with the dinosaurs, and small flying creatures. It has every prehistoric creature and five of them on one page. I prefer it when it’s more on each page. One of my friends also has this book.
Do you have any other dinosaur books to recommend?
Daniel: A Dinosaur a Day. It’s for maybe age five or six. There’s a dinosaur named for each day of the entire year. For December, there’s 31 dinosaurs and then you go back to the start.
Do you think many dinosaurs are yet to be discovered?
Caleb: Yes, I think so, because they just discovered a new one.
When you look at birds, do they make you think of dinosaurs?
Daniel: Yes, because I know that birds are dinosaurs.
Caleb: Yes. A chicken is a velociraptor.
If it were possible, would you like to bring dinosaurs back or are you glad we don’t co-exist with them?
Daniel: I’m glad they don’t exist because some of the meat eaters can eat us.
Caleb: Both. I’m glad that the meat eaters aren’t here but I’d like the mini plant eaters as pets. I think that would be good. We could have them as pets and if anyone tried to burgle my house they could attack them.
If you could be a dinosaur for a day, which one would you like to be?
Caleb: I’ve no idea, there are so many, there’s about fifty thousand.
Daniel: I’d like to be a triceratops. No, actually, ankylosaurus. Because if anyone attacked me, I could whack them with my tail. Or if they tried to get to my back, then my spikes would spike them.
Caleb: But what if they rolled you over?
Daniel: I guess I could sort that out with my tail…
Caleb: But how do you roll back over?
Daniel: Maybe I poke the ground with the tail.
Caleb: I’d like to be a mini velociraptor so I could bite everyone without them noticing, and they’d be wondering what had bitten them. I’d run really fast and if anyone tried to squash me, I would just bite them.
Caleb: I have Extreme Animals in the same series as Extreme Dinosaurs. I like the back bit because it has all the records. At the end of Extreme Dinosaurs, it has ‘The Extreme Hall of Fame’ with the fastest dinosaur, the biggest dinosaur… I like that.
Thank you both very much for sharing your dinosaur book recommendations.
Five Books aims to keep its book recommendations and interviews up to date. If you are the interviewee and would like to update your choice of books (or even just what you say about them) please email us at [email protected]
