This book has been incredibly popular since Liam (4 now!) received it for his birthday. For the first two weeks he was looking at it every morning as soon as he woke up, (though early in the morning he would skip the Tyrannosaurus page – too scary), and again in the afternoon. That rate of looking at it has reduced slightly now, but he still seriously loves it.

Dinosaurs has a couple of really cool things that together make it great.
First of all it is a popup book, and popups of big, fanged dinosaurs chasing GIANT herbivores makes for a really exciting page opening experience. When Liam first opened the wrapping on this book, we thought “this book isn’t going to last five minutes”, and indeed within (literally) minutes, a scaly bird had been ripped off from one of the pages. But surprisingly it has been very well looked after since, and no other real damage has been done. Still, I don’t expect it to last a really long time in the face of the high usage that it is getting.
Secondly, whenever you turn one of the popup pages, the book makes noises. Scary, Carnivore hunting through the forest noises.
But, for me the best part is that each double-page popup is accompanied by a detailed informational page. This informational page has a solid paragraph on each dinosaur shown in the popup, using big words and potentially difficult concepts. And Liam loves me to read these to him. “Read the Tyrannosaur one to me dad!”. He is also pretty keen on the Allosaurus (the lesser known awesome predator from the Jurassic period). This part is full of information to keep the kids happy and interested. It has text like

Allosaurus was the biggest of the Jurassic meat-eaters: twice the size of Ceratosaurus. Its huge three-clawed hands were as large as a human head, and its razor sharp, serrated teeth were perfect for tearing flesh from bone.

Liam loves that part.

Overall, this book is never going to be a keeper; in fact it is probably going to be a tattered mess in 6 months. But in the meantime Liam is getting immense enjoyment from it and learning something interesting at the same time. I fully recommend it.