Curious Questions and Answers About Prehistoric Animals

Here’s a good book for the smartphone generation (a phrase that made me feel like an old fogey as soon as the text left my fingertips)! As written by Camilla de la Bédoyère, Curious Questions and Answer About Prehistoric Animals is sorta like the book incarnation of the stereotypical curious child with hundreds of loosely related questions, connected only by the common theme of prehistoric life. (For what feels in some ways like a more organized version of this book, check out its counterpart, Curious Questions and Answers About Fossils.)

Occasionally there will be a loose theme within a page, such as a collection of questions about bugs, evolution, etc. Readers used to more organized books, though, may find it somewhat jarring that it just as often eschews any connecting threads between the questions at all.

This intentionally disorganized format does how its advantages, however. It can make it easier to (briefly) cover a wider range of species and topics, for one thing. On the other hand, its greatest advantage is that it is likely helpful in keeping the attention of more distractible kids, keeping things fresh by quickly answering an interesting question before bouncing on to the next.

The cartoon illustrations by Jack Viant are perhaps a bit looser than I might have personally preferred (Did You Know Dino? and Mammoth is Mopey are good examples of cartoonish illustrations I like), but it is generally clear what species the illustrations intend to represent, even when unlabeled. This is perhaps best demonstrated by the pterosaurs on pages 8-9.

I think the audience for this one might simultaneously be broader and more specific than some. If you have a kid who perhaps has a strong interest in prehistoric creatures, but not as strong of an interest in actually reading about them, then this might be the sort of book that could capture their attention. Curious Questions and Answer About Prehistoric Animals has got enough in it to teach some interesting facts not widely represented in basic dinosaur media, but not so detailed as to require a more dedicated interest in it. As I mentioned previously, however, Curious Questions and Answers About Fossils is in many ways similar but superior to its counterpart, so I would perhaps recommend that one instead.

For books that might appeal to a roughly similar target demographic, I suggest the Encyclopedia Prehistorica Dinosaurs Pop-Up Book, Sharkabet: A Sea of Sharks From A to Z, Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Life, Shine-A-Light: Dinosaurs, Out of the Blue, and Animals of a Bygone Era. They all have very different styles, but should all appeal to roughly the same age of kids.