Colorful World of Dinosaurs (watercolor illutrations and fun facts about 46 dinosaurs)

by Matt Sewell

Overview

Did you know that Argentinosaurus was as heavy as a herd of elephants? That Mosasaurus was three times the length of a great white shark? That Microraptor was the size of a pigeon but with four wings? This magnificent book imagines dinosaurs as they might well have been, based on recent findings— feathered, finned, and full of color. Gorgeous watercolors accompany surprising, little-known, and fun-to-tell facts about dinosaur behavior, habits, and appearance, bringing these prehistoric creatures to life in a new way. This fascinating book will delight dinosaur fans, young and old.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781616897161
Publisher:	Princeton Architectural Press
Publication date:	10/09/2018
Sales rank:	242,615
Product dimensions:	9.20(w) x 11.80(h) x 0.60(d)
Age Range:	5 - 12 Years

About the Author

Matt Sewell is a writer, artist, and illustrator whose books include Our Garden Birds, Our Woodland Birds, and A Charm of Goldfinches. He lives in Shrewsbury, England, where he is an avid ornithologist.

Editorial Reviews

02/01/2019

Gr 1–4—The driving insight behind this volume is that while large terrestrial animals surviving today are often muted shades of brown and gray, it is just as likely that prehistoric dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and ichthyosaurs were as brightly colored as their modern relatives in the reptile and bird classifications. The book begins with a brief overview of the different taxonomies of dinosaurs, as well as the time periods in which they lived. With a background in ornithology, Sewell provides a vibrant interpretation of recent paleontological discoveries. The work includes discoveries as recent as the Dracoraptor found in Wales in 2014. The watercolor illustrations do not seek the hyper-realism of other encyclopedic works on dinosaurs, and the more cartoonish style better suits the initial challenge to readers, that we should imagine for ourselves what dinosaurs might have looked like, based on the fossil evidence available. One key inference includes the feather-covered Yutyrannus discovered in China, a predecessor of the Tyrannosaurus rex, which opens up the possibility that the Tyrannosaurus also had feathers. Each illustrated dinosaur shines with personality, and Sewell humorously theorizes which ones were especially vicious or gentle or intelligent, based on their physical characteristics. VERDICT A bright addition to elementary nonfiction collections, and is sure to engage dinosaur lovers and novices alike.—Kelly Topita, Anne Arundel County Public Library, MD

School Library Journal

2018-06-25
Fifty dinosaurs and kindred contemporaries display their hues in this large-format portrait gallery.A greater mismatch between the pictures and the accompanying descriptive comments would be hard to imagine. Arranged in no discernable order one or two per spread, Sewell's dinosaurs float benignly in static poses against white backgrounds. Figures mostly look flat and are roughly the same size, so there are no cues to relative scale. Rather than opening to display jagged dentifrices, mouths are usually closed, often set in small smiles, and the artist indicates details of scales, skin, and other features with just a perfunctory line or color change. Said colors sometimes make vivid contrasts—Velociraptor sports a downright garish mix of blood red and turquoise—but are for the most part pretty blends of hues. In contrast to the art's weightless harmony, the narrative goes for the gusto: Ceratosaurus "was easily distinguishable by two devil horns, a fearsome nasal spike, a ridge of spikes down its back, and a set of huge gnashers designed for ripping apart the flesh of anything it came across." Quetzalcoatlus "must have been a worrying sight, the size of a fighter jet wheeling round the sky." References to "slow-footed" T. rex and "cunning" Utahraptor as well as a claim that Troodons "weren't exactly rocket scientists" indicate a loose grasp of the difference between fact and speculation to boot.Pretty but insubstantial. (Nonfiction. 8-10)

Kirkus Reviews

Read More