Part of the same Dinosaur Dynasty series that brought us Giants of the Earth and The Real Monsters, Dinosaurs – All Shapes and Sizes was published in 1993 by Highlights for Children in the US and Watts Books in the UK, and was one of the several popular dinosaur books that Dougal Dixon wrote one evening while engaging in lively conversation and playing a game of darts down at his local. (Which is not to imply that it’s bad, merely that he…
In my further quest to avoid the DK Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs & Prehistoric Life from 2001 (which I do now own, at least), here’s another book from around that time – Dinosaurs, published in 2002 by Fog City Press. It’s a rather generic affair all told, but I’m sure there’s someone out there for whom this is an important childhood memory. Besides which, it features illustrations by Steve Kirk and Luis Rey (among others), not to mention an interesting mix of…
As the sort of unremarkable kids’ book that you might find buried in a stack at a charity shop, looking a little forlorn (but I found on eBay, of course), you might not expect too much from the Oxford First Book of Dinosaurs (part of a series that included further volumes on animals, art, maths, science, and space). As you’ve no doubt guessed, it uses a lot of art recycled from earlier books. Ah, but in this case, it’s a…
There’s a new face on the blog! Sophie has been getting some attention on Twitter with, among other things, her threads on vintage dinosaur books. Of course, it was a matter of time before she found her way here. Please welcome Sophie and come say hi in the comments! – Niels Hi there, everyone! I’m Sophie, you might know me from my Twitter where I’ve made a name for myself with my enormous threads on old dinosaur art, regular commentary…
The fifth episode of the LITC podcast is here, in which the team ventures off the beaten path into more unusual forms of palaeoart. We discuss a volume of vintage dinosaur art that was ahead of its time in its blending of photography and illustration. For our interview, Natee talks to Rebecca Groom, whose hand-crafted soft toys of underrepresented animals, both living and extinct, have won her many admirers. Featuring rainbows and unicorns and an exclusive poetry reading by Natee.…
On more than one occasion, I’ve bought an intriguing-looking old dinosaur book on eBay, only to find that it’s filled with artwork from an older book that’s already been featured on the blog. This would be one of those cases…almost. For you see, while an awful lot of the palaeoart in this book is recycled from 1992’s Gollancz Dinosaur Enyclopaedia for Children, there’s a significant amount of newer material here too, and given that it’s all from the same artist…
Because the last post got a least a couple of comments asking for it, let’s take this Steve Kirk-illustrated children’s book out for one more spin. Naturally, and in spite of its name, the Dinosaur Encyclopaedia for Children contains a rather large variety of non-dinosaurs – larger, in fact, than in many other books that are ostensibly about dinosaurs but veer off into the realm of otherprehistoricanimals. These include all manner of pterosaurs, crocodilians, squamates, synapsids and various marine reptiles…
By popular demand (a whole two comments – hey, that’s good going these days!), here’s a small selection of Steve Kirk’s ‘catalogue’ illustrations, as featured in the Dinosaur Encyclopaedia for Children from Gollancz. As I mentioned previously, most of these are rather bland by Kirk’s standards, and it wouldn’t surprise me if a lot of them were rather older than the typically lively panoramas featured last time. Still, for connoisseurs of 1980s and ’90s ‘spotters guide’-type dinosaur books, I’m sure…
Who doesn’t love a bit of Steve Kirk? I’ve featured his work numerous times on LITC over the years – both here and over on version 1.0 – and I simply can’t get enough. Imagine my delight, then, when I found hitherto unseen Kirkwork in a book for sale in an Oxfam bookshop on Blatchington Road, Hove, just a short walk from where I live. And priced at just 49 pence! Not even this book’s clear designation as being For…
Some more Steve Kirk for you now, why not? You might have noticed that my first post on this book only covered theropods (for reasons that are surely well known by now), so let’s now turn to those pesky Other Dinosaurs. A good place to start would be what appear to have been the cover stars (I lack the dust jacket) – these two hadrosaurs, here. And suitably 1980s-looking they are, too. Prior to the Dino Renaissance, hadrosaurs tended to…
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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.