Say “Ladybird dinosaur book” to someone, and they’ll very likely think of the book illustrated by Bernard Robinson that was reprinted a number of times and spanned the childhoods of multiple generations. (Well, at least two.) I reviewed it all the way back in 2011, so perhaps my review is now as nostalgic for some people as Ladybird books are for others. (Nah, just kidding. I’m not so deluded.) Robinson’s illustrations, while technically superb and highly memorable, were looking rather…
Albertosaurus
Today’s book has gotten some attention recently on some of the palaeoart-centered Facebook groups we frequent. It features little-seen but high quality art from the nineties. Once I saw it, I knew I had to track this book down. This was not straightforward. Not only is this book only available in Czech, it is only available from Czech booksellers that only ship to Czechia. I managed to nab a copy off Rostislav Walica, so kudos to him. I now (maybe?)…
Podcast Show Notes: Episode 31 – Mark Hallett and Dragons of Wales
Podcast Show Notes January 31, 2024Our tremendous trio is back for 2024, but not all things are as they were… mostly they are, though. We get back into the swing of Vintage Dinosaur art, or is that Nostalgic Dinosaur Art? We explore the work of Mark Hallett, the man Marc once declared his Favourite Palaeoartist Ever, as it appears in Stephen and Sylvia Czerkas’ Dinosaurs: A Global View, also featuring works by John Sibbick and Douglas Henderson. Then, Marc and Natee interview Andy Frazer, also…
Vintage Dinosaur Art: Dinosaurs (St. Martin’s Press) – Part 1
Vintage Dinosaur Art September 19, 2023You know how we’re always reviewing books that are so big that our scanners have trouble with them? We always have to scrape our images together from two, sometimes four, separate scans. It’s getting tiresome. Let’s do a small book. I found a book that is absolutely teeny tiny, smaller than my hand. Scanning this one was no trouble at all, look. The scan probably appears bigger on your screen than the real thing. I’ve said nothing at all about…
It’s time for another entry into Don and Donna month, which will take more than a month but time is meaningless. Today, we look at a volume in the mid-90s Carolrhoda dinosaur series on specific dinosaurs, this one focusing on that big-eyed, big-brained, not at all venomous pint-sized predator that looked very different way back when. Sorry Mrs. Newhard, they didn’t do a thorough enough job censoring out your name. As reconstructed by Donna Braginetz, Troodon looks pretty much what…
I can’t believe my luck: in the ten years LITC has been running, nobody has ever talked about what might be my favourite dinosaur book of all time! Get ready, everybody, this is gonna be a treat. The Great Dinosaurs was originally published in 1994 and translated for my neck of the woods in 1998, under the simple name Dinosauriërs. I got this gem of a book around the tail end of my childhood dinosaur obsession in the late nineties,…
I’ve been having a pretty crazy summer, so when a dear friend of mine offered to take me to Dierenpark Amersfoort, a lovely, lush, forested zoo in the town of the same name, I jumped at the chance. Within the zoo is a bit of forest dedicated to dinosaurs: Marc visited for the first time in 2011, and I’ve been a few times as well. I was wondering if anything had changed and how the pandemic measures would affect my…
Vintage Dinosaur Media: Dinosaurs! The Multimedia Encyclopedia – Part 1
Vintage Dinosaur Art July 5, 2020I can’t pretend that today’s post isn’t fueled by pure, shameless, self-indulgent nostalgia. This little computer program from 1993 is something I spent literally months with as a child, quite undeterred by the fact that I didn’t understand a word of English. I had my own sources for actually reading about dinosaurs, after all (mostly Dinosaurs! Magazine, though my memory of that series has soured since I’ve learnt that the Dutch version ran for only half as many issues as…
Theropods this, theropods that. It’s always them good-for-nothing toothy chickens what are hogging all the spotlights around here. Let’s give the noble ceratopsians some love! The Horned Dinosaurs is the kind of dinosaur book we need more of: A highly specialized scientific deep dive into one limited clade of animals, written by a respected palaeontologist (Peter Dodson) and bringing the reader fully up to speed on current research. “Up to speed” is relative, of course. The book is from 1996,…
July was our fifth and final month of collecting data in the 2019 Survey of Paleoartists. Now comes the “fun” part – crunching the numbers! Since this is an entirely volunteer effort, no promises on timeline other than that I hope to have the report ready for your eyes by the end of the year. I’ll also remind you that LITC is on Patreon! I’m thankful for the support we receive, which currently pays for our web hosting fees and…