While I haven’t featured any of her books here before, my readers may nevertheless be familiar with the work of Rachel Ignotofsky. She is a prolific children’s author and illustrator, but it perhaps best known for her bestselling book Women in Science. It’s a great book, but I ultimately decided against reviewing it here since there was only a single page relevant to paleontology, discussing the work of Mary Anning.
Happily, Ignotofsky has since released an entire book on paleontology, titled Dinosaurs: Exploring Prehistoric Life and Geological Time. It’s fairly dense for a children’s book, going into great detail on various topics in paleontology, all arranged chronologically according to geologic time. Despite “Dinosaurs” getting top billing in the title, this book is about so much more. It’s very much an “and other prehistoric creatures” sort of book, featuring plenty of lifeforms not only from the Mesozoic, but other eras in Earth’s history as well.
Ignotofsky starts with some brief primers on the basics (What is a Dinosaur? What is a Fossil? etc.) before moving on to the various eras in Earth’s history. We begin in the Precambrian, with brief looks at the Hadean, Archean, and Proterozoic Eons, before diving into greater detail for the various subdivisions of the Phanerozoic Eon.
From there, we take the familiar tour through the different periods of the Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic Eras, with spotlights on major events, famous creatures, and other fun facts relevant to each block of time. Ignotofsky manages to pack a lot of information into each section, and features an excellent variety of animals, including some obscure species I hadn’t even heard of before!
Ignotofsky’s illustrations are a delight to view; they are enjoyably stylized without sacrificing too much in the way of accuracy. The artwork is bright and colorful without being too outlandish, and just works well to keep the reader’s attention throughout the book.
I don’t have too much else to say other than I really enjoyed this book. Dinosaurs: Exploring Prehistoric Life and Geological Time is well written and pleasantly illustrated, and is sure to teach kids a thing or two about the past that they may not find in other children’s books. I happily give this book my Dino Dad Stomp of Approval!
Dino Dad Reviews 