While I’ve found a great deal of blog fodder on eBay, it’s always immeasurably more pleasurable to spot a book in person, out there in the wild. As it happens, my friend Huseyin actually found this one, amid the glorious chaos of the aptly-named Raining Books shop here in Brighton. Originally published in 1982 in …
After covering Konstantin Flyorov a few monts ago, I found there to be a lot of interest in vintage Russian palaeoart. There was a small but very interesting palaeoart scene in Soviet-era Moscow, linked to its tradition of animal and wildlife art, that is stylistically quite distinct from the western tradition. Today, I want to …
Because at least a couple of people requested it, here’s a third outing for The Big Golden Book of Dinosaurs (not that one). And this time, Heterodontosaurus would like to give you a lovely big hug. Christopher Santoro’s Heterodontosaurus follows in the proud ’80s and ’90s tradition of giving the animal rather unsettling arms and …
Or Norman: Into the Normanverse What book casts a longer shadow than David Norman’s 1985 The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs? Which dinosaur reconstructions are more iconic, more widely seen and more frequently copied than John Sibbick’s? What book has been referenced more frequently on these pages than the one we still affectionately call the Normanpedia? …
Time for another round of The Big Golden Book of Dinosaurs. No, not that one – the one from 1988, written by Mary Elting and illustrated by Christopher Santoro. As an aside, I didn’t say too much about Santoro last time, and I probably should have. He’s an accomplished and much-lauded illustrator of children’s books …
I check the copyright page, and I check it again. 1993? Really? Surely that can’t be true. Surely this book is at least fifteen years newer than that. But no. The proof is right there, undeniable, clear as day. What sorcery is this? Who stole a time machine? How is this book so good? That …
Here’s a book that feels like it could’ve come straight out of my childhood, although in reality the first time I ever saw it was just a few weeks ago. Published in 1988 by Western Publishing under the Golden Book banner, it is (at least, in name) a direct successor to a Zallinger-illustrated classic. In …
Funny story, this one. As a science educator, I visit primary schools all over the country, and I often can’t resist scanning their school libraries for dinosaur books. Most of the time, I run into these awful late-2000’s stock-CGI schlockfests, but last week, I hit paydirt. A beautifully illustrated German-made children’s book from the late …
As you can well imagine, I’ve read a fair few dinosaur books from the latter half of the twentieth century, and while they are almost always dated in just about every respect, there are very few that stun me with their sheer strangeness. One can well understand outdated views on dinosaur evolutionary history, anatomy and …
The Last Dinosaur is a strange little book I remember reading as a dinosaur-obsessed kid. I thought it was quite neat at the time. Re-reading it now, however, I’ve gained a new appreciation for just how unusual this book is. The Last Dinosaur (no relation to the 1977 tokusatsu film) was written by Jim Murphy …