Both of our children loved dinosaurs. This is great for us because we like dinosaurs too. We’ve saved all of the dinosaur toys and models that they have (Dinovember!!!) and are still thankful that one of our kids is in this zone. The problem for parents and therefore young children has always been a lack of all age accessible dinosaur books. They’re too cartoonish or detailed for the short attention span that young children have. Early Earth Journal, The Late Jurassic by Juan Carlos Alonso and Gregory S. Paul fills this void of dinosaur books perfectly.

Adults, as well as, children of any age will jump into The Late Jurassic and find themselves getting lost in the illustrations and education. Don’t tell the kids that there’s a fair amount of education happening here. For the most part they won’t notice the in depth notes on the skeletal system of a Therapod or learning exactly what is an Ornithischian.

Kids will fall in love with the illustrations and unlike most dinosaur books that are OK for children, it doesn’t sugar coat the dino world. There are some illustrations that feature various dinosaurs eating, but it’s not graphic and is done is such a manner that even our 4 year old can look at them. It’s not bloody or over the top, but it gets the point across that some of these creatures were the biggest, most brutal predators ever to roam the Earth.
 
Adults will pick up the book and be reminded of those Time-Life books we had back in the day. This is a quality book with a very sturdy spine, thicker than average semi-glossy paper that thankfully includes a pronunciation key at the back.

The Theropods, Sauropds, Ornithischians, Pterosaurs and Mammals each have their own section with a couple pages of overview about the time period. That text is for middle school students and sets up each dinosaur. Members of each classification are given two pages to strut their stuff. We see a wide shot, close up of their head, perhaps their mouth, claws, hunting style or other quality that made them unique.