5+ Dinosaur Books for Young Minds Who Like Mega(fauna) Ideas
Written by Katie O. Engen
M.Ed. & Middle Grade Author
Narrowing down the approximately 65-billion dinosaur books to the five best titles for kids is an epic
challenge. Let’s go! You probably recall Mary Pope Osbourne’s Dinosaurs Before Dark (Magic Tree House, Book 1) classic kidlit dino-encounter story. But did you know that Michael Crichton originally wrote Jurassic Park from a kid’s point of view? His full-grown beta readers felt left out and panned his early drafts. Crichton re-wrote for adult readers – story extinction denied. Fast forward, and Jurassic World, the robust junior novelization series, and related picture books have inspired even the youngest dino fans. Other picture books like How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight? and the rest of Jane Yolen’s series along with the newer Penelope Rex titles by Ryan T. Higgins, starting with We Don’t Eat Our Classmates, remind us that dinosaurs are so fascinating they’ve helped evolve learning milestones for our littlest readers. These roaring tales with prehistorically improbable anthropomorphism offer mega-fun ways to share how fiercely Jurassic the lessons of the toddler-to-kindergarten era can be.
The effort to consolidate the many formats and genres of dino titles for kids is like phylogeny’s fractious struggle to define and categorize all species of life by parsing genes. So, let’s focus on something for the kids who once loved Joanna Cole’s The Magic School Bus In the Time of the Dinosaurs and now crave more mature stories. Ones framed and furthered by fun facts as well as flaky-to-foolhardy-to-freaking awesome characters.
Middle Graders Need Dinos, Too
Filling this tall order starts with my new fiction title, Winx Thinks – Dinosaurs! which evolved to bridge the gap between the Magic Treehouse and Jurassic Park. It’s a time travel adventure with adaptations suited to survive middle grade fans’ demands for ancient times and silly antics.
It’s the Mesozoic-or-bust for 12-year-old Winx! But thanks to a pair of very old, very stinky socks that make time traveling tricky, Winx gets bounced around some crazy moments in paleontology as he quests and quick-thinks his way to real dinosaurs. Built with a zest for megafauna and other big ideas at its core, this fast-paced plot rides on humor, curiosity, and family ties.
Winx Thinks – Dinosaurs! is the first book of a fiction series, and it aligns well with some amazing nonfiction books, too. In fact, it was written to inspire readers – both hardcore dino fans and newbies – to think and wonder about prehistory outside of its pages. Here are some great nonfiction titles to help make that happen.
Fantastic Nonfiction for Megafauna Fans
Progenitors & Early Pros of Paleontology
Winx’s story was created in part to help young readers experience the mess, danger, and glory of the birth of paleontology. Winx’s time travel mishaps land him in locations and with people that helped evolve fossil collecting from a fancy party game to a fact-finding natural science. A great look at thisprocess is The First Dinosaur: How Science Solved the Greatest Mystery on Earth by Ian Lendler (ages 10+). Simon & Schuster shares, “ …not so long ago, the concept that these giant creatures could have roamed Earth millions of years before humans was unfathomable. People thought what we know as dinosaur bones were the bones of giant humans. Of large elephants. Of angels, even.” Lendler’s book shows how “eccentric men and overlooked women” resolved at least the outside edges of the puzzle that became paleontology.
99+ Problems - But This Paleontologist Ain’t One
Michael Crichton wrote Dragon Teeth, adult historical fiction about two fossil-obsessed men’s daring and dastardly approaches to outdoing each other’s discoveries. Early on, I tried capturing their clash in a picture book featuring Winx; he insisted on another format. Later, David K. Randall’s The Monster's Bones (Young Readers Edition) - The Discovery of T. Rex and How It Shook Our World solidified for me key paleo concepts while highlighting the determination needed to overcome false starts that Winx aspires to achieve. Randall’s book features early paleontologist Barnum Brown’s long, complicated struggle to unearth the first T-Rex fossil and socialite Henry Fairfield Osborn’s race to get all Brown’s discoveries to New York’s American Museum of Natural History. Together, they catalyze society’s first and lasting dinosaur fandom. The publisher notes, “ …from prehistory to present day, from remote Patagonia to the unforgiving Badlands of the American West to the penthouses of Manhattan, The Monster’s Bones reveals how a monster of a bygone era ignited a new understanding of our planet and our place within it. ”
A Pair of Prehistoric Fact-a-Paloozas
Just as Winx researched to manage his crazy Mesozoic quest, I researched to learn, verify, and reframe facts to write and refine
By the way, this post is replete with experts creating titles for kids, which is the best kind of primary source. For example, Evan Johnson-Ransom is a vertebrate paleontologist studying the morphology and feeding behavior of meat-eating theropod dinosaurs. Julius Csotonyi is a paleoartist renowned for accurately depicting dino traits, diet, behavior, and survival adaptations.
PaleoArt – Pretending Like a Pro
Fun and fundamental concepts play off each other in STEM-oriented fiction like
Then there’s Mesozoic Art: Dinosaurs and Other Ancient Animals in Art edited by Steve White and Darren Naish. This anthology of 20 new and veteran artists is its own adventure through a wide range of dino-centric images created with pencils, paintbrushes, and digital pens. Anyone wanting to see what Winx experienced on his prehistoric travels will find it here – and more.
Bonus Book: For those who want to slip inside a dinosaur’s mind, Red Raptor (all ages) by paleontologist Robert T. Bakker, shares the direct point of view of a female velociraptor surviving loss and a daring migration to the Pacific Ocean. This speculative outlet for science comes from Bakker’s own theories on the thoughts, behaviors, and even emotions of a prehistoric heroine.
Like all things paleontology, once you dig in there’s going to be more to discover.