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…
It’s been a bit quiet around here lately, hasn’t it? Personally, the first half of this year felt like a good 2 years in itself, such were the Life Events that happened. Things have settled down now, though, so I’m hoping to get back to more frequent posting. Why not start with another in The Child’s World dinosaur series (because I have it handy)? Triceratops was published in 1988, written by Janet Riehecky (of course) and illustrated by Diana Magnuson…
Oops, I guess it’s been a while. I promised you part three of that big Czech book from 1993, and here it is. If you need a refresher, and I imagine you do, here’s part one and part two again. So far, we’ve seen sauropods with trunks, theropods with fish heads, more sauropods with trunks, attempts at feathering and lots of mood and atmosphere. Also sauropods with trunks. Let’s see what other strange wonders Barbora Kyšková has in store for…
When I first started writing for this blog – many, many years ago now, possibly even as long ago as 2009 – I was accused of being overly-critical. “Who cares if a dinosaur’s gross anatomy shifts considerably from one illustration to the next?” “You’re pissing all over a classic!” You know, that sort of thing. And the accusers had a point, at least some of the time. As I’ve got older I’ve certainly mellowed – not to mention got to…
When looking at books from the years BT (Before T’internet), we must of course always bear in mind that decent reference material was rather difficult to come by, especially for your average jobbing illustrator without privileged access to museums and/or scientists. (And even then, the scientists sometimes just didn’t give a toss.) This explains the proliferation of Knight, Burian, and Zallinger clones – what else were the poor artists supposed to do, if not take inspiration from the greats? Nevertheless,…
Westfalen in October can mean only one thing: rain, rain and more rain. But nothing is to spoil my mood today: I’ve come to Münster, more or less on a whim, for this lovely natural history museum (as well as the zoo next door). The museum is currently undergoing partial renovations, but no matter; I’ll come back again next year to see what they made of it. A planetarium is also housed in the building at an upcharge. It’s worth…
So here I am once more, in the playground of the finer arts. This is the 21st century, and we’re looking at one of the definitive dinosaur books of the year 2000, illustrated or rather painted by the talented Larry Felder. If you’ve seen part one, you’ll know Larry’s depictions of Triassic and Jurassic creatures was, gorgeous though they may have been, somewhat indebted to Walking With Dinosaurs. In the Cretaceous chapters of In The Presence of Dinosaurs, his work…
Given Sam Bright’s excellent recent guest post on the Crystal Palace dinosaurs, it only seems fitting that we turn to another, more modern park full of full-scale life reconstructions of prehistoric beasts. Except, of course, this is firmly on the kitsch-o-saurus end of the scale, and there certainly won’t be a reference section at the end. Leave it to me to the lower the tone. What’s more, this is yet another example of me wallowing in childhood nostalgia. For I…
Falling very much into that particular sub-category of kiddy fodder dinosaur book in which the animals almost all inhabit parched desertscapes, Now You Can Read About…Dinosaurs was published by Brimax Books in 1984 (with this edition arriving in 1985). For the mid 1980s, it’s pretty much par for the course – a little backward when compared with the full-throttle Dino Renaissance art that was already out there, but hardly much more retrograde than even the Normanpedia. It was books like this…
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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.