Right then – who remembers this one? Hopefully quite a few of you, as it was originally published in 1990 in hardback as part of the Young World series, with this paperback recycling appearing in 2000. It may well have been translated into other languages, too (Agata seems to remember a Polish edition). It’s just one of the hundreds and hundreds (probably) of kids’ books about dinosaurs churned out by well-known palaeontologist Michael Benton while on his coffee breaks in…
It’s time to bring it home, the big project of discussing the seven massive paintings by Marie Hubrecht on the walls of the Joke Smit College, once the Girl’s Lyceum, in Amsterdam. Having discussed the major dinosaur painting first and the early stages of the Palaeozoic second, it’s time we crawl back up out of the time abyss, towards and into our familiar Mesozoic. In the middle of the Southern wall, above three different doorways, we have the second-largest painting…
Who’d like some more Rosewarne? In my last post on The Reign of the Reptiles, looking predominantly at illustrations depicting contemporaneous animals in prehistoric landscapes, I mentioned that there were also a great many illustrations of individual animals isolated against white backgrounds, and that I’d consider a follow-up post if anyone actually read that far and wanted to see them. Well, someone did! BrianL left the following comment: The smaller illustrations in The Reign of the Reptiles, like the Dimorphodon…
Graham Rosewarne was an artist whose work greatly elevated my beloved Dinosaurs! magazine (published by Orbis in the 1990s), alongside that by the likes of Jim Robins and Steve White. Unfortunately, books featuring work of his that isn’t just recycled from Dinosaurs! can be a little difficult to come by. I was therefore quite pleased to happen upon The Reign of the Reptiles in The Warehouse Antiques & Collectables while over in Norfolk (a shop we definitely didn’t just visit because it’s adjoined…
We are going to be talking about Dinocon, honest. But until then, here are some of the other illustrations from The Ultimate Book of Dinosaurs, first published in 2000 (this edition’s from 2002). In my last post, I looked at some (most, really) of Steve White’s contributions; this time, I’ll be featuring work from (deep breath) John Butler, Chris Christoforou, John Egan, Roger Goode, Philip Hood, Mark Iley, David McAllister, Martin McKenna, Michael Posen, and Tim White. Although because individual artists aren’t…
Today’s title is mostly a prime example of late ’90s – early 2000s kiddie book filler, but no doubt thanks to the arcane rules of licensing it manages to feature some interesting artwork all the same. The Ultimate Book of Dinosaurs (not to be confused with the vastly superior DK book from ’93) was first published in 2000 by Parragon, with this edition arriving in 2002. No fewer than 12 artists illustrated this book, but individual pieces are sadly not credited.…
It’s high time we go back to Amsterdam and talk about the Marie Hubrecht murals at the Joke Smit College. You may or may not recall me talking about the amazing Jurassic/Cretaceous mural. If not, that will be your homework (we are at a school, after all). That was a while ago, and I promised you more. Of course, “more” in this case means we have to leave my comfort zone of Dinosaur World and dive all the way into…
After a mere 12 years, it’s time to bring the Dinosaur Dynasty series to a close with the, er, penultimate book (at least according to the order presented on the back cover). If you’d like to look over the set in the correct order, I’ll list them at the end of this post. For now, here’s A Closer Look, published (as with all the others) in 1993 by Highlights for Children in the US and Watts Books in the UK, and…
The 1990s was a decade of unparalleled Dinomania; a time where dinosaur books threatened to spill out from bookstores and libraries and bury us all in literary celebrations of prehistoric life. It was a better time. The majority of books published back then were illustrated by artists just didn’t get dinosaurs, and worse still, by artists who just copied the art of whatever dinosaur book they could find at the local library. Patrick O’Brien was no such artist. Gigantic! was…
A couple of weeks ago, I reviewed a book from 1993’s Dinosaur Dynasty series (written by Dougal Dixon, published by Highlights for Children in the US and Watts in the UK) for the first time since 2013. Well, here’s another one! Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a copy of A Closer Look for sale outside the US, so here’s Death and Discovery, which predictably is rather lighter on the life reconstructions. But there’s still good stuff to be had, although not courtesy…
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Chasmosaurus belli silhouette in custom bulleted list by Scott D. Sampson, Mark A. Loewen, Andrew A. Farke, Eric M. Roberts, Catherine A. Forster, Joshua A. Smith, and Alan L. Titus, CC BY-SA 3.0. Sourced from PhyloPic.