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tyrannosaurus

Vintage Dinosaur Art: Dinosaurs (Ladybird Square books)

Vintage Dinosaur Art

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…

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Vintage Dinosaur Art: Oxford First Book of Dinosaurs

Vintage Dinosaur Art

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…

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All aboard for 2025

Attraction Review Personal reflection

Not wanting the last post of the year to be a vanilla Vintage Dinosaur Art post featuring some filler art from 20 years ago presented a conundrum. What else am I supposed to do these days? A few different ideas came to mind – a bit of personal reflection, a review of a museum or other attraction that I’d failed to post about, or a humorous comparison of ‘expert reacts’ videos regarding dinosaur media. In the end, I decided to…

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Vintage Dinosaur Art: Hubrecht at the Lyceum – Part 1

Vintage Dinosaur Art

Once again: Marie Hubrecht. Are you tired of me talking about Marie Hubrecht yet? Because I’m not done. If you want more Hubrecht, check out my reviews of Verdwenen Werelden here, here and here, and our Verdwenen Werelden podcast episode here! This post is a direct companion to my last one, in which I detail the time I went to see the spectacular murals she made in the 1920s at the former Girls’ Lyceum in Amsterdam. These paintings have been…

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Vintage Dinosaur Art: Dinosaur (DK Revealed)

Vintage Dinosaur Art

Regular readers (we have some, right?) will be aware that our sole criterion for a book’s inclusion in Vintage (=Old) Dinosaur Art is that it be 20 years old. Consequently, books from the early 2000s have now entered our purview. It was a time when, in the wake of Walking With Dinosaurs, publishers demanded increasing numbers of CG creations in lieu of more traditional illustrations and model photography. Dorling Kindersley (aka DK) very much followed this trend, inserting very dodgy…

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Vintage Dinosaur Telly: The Magic School Bus

TV review

Seatbelts, everyone! A few weeks ago I reviewed The Magic School Bus in the Time of the Dinosaurs, and mused at the end that I might have to seek out the TV episode on the same theme…which was in no way an appeal for commenters to do the work for me and provide a link, oh no. (As if I’d be so lazy.) Nevertheless, Zain Ahmed obligingly provided a link to a YouTube video. Thanks, Zain! (Admittedly, it’s not exactly…

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Vintage Dinosaur Art: The Magic School Bus in the Time of the Dinosaurs

Vintage Dinosaur Art

The Magic School Bus franchise was a big deal at exactly the right sort of time for it to have impacted my childhood, but it completely passed me by – probably because I’m British, and it wasn’t quite as well known here. I do have vague memories of a fantastical yellow bus (which was a bit of an alien concept – the yellow school bus, that is) that could fly through space and whatnot, but that’s about it. A shame,…

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Vintage Dinosaur Art: The Dinosaur Action Set (Book One!)

Vintage Dinosaur Art

Today’s entry is rather similar in concept to the later Dinosaur Park, which I reviewed back in 2020, but quite unlike the DK ACTION PACK (in spite of the rather similar title). It would appear to be a straightforward book at first glance, but upon opening an instruction is immediately given to prise out the staples and then remove all the pages. What’s this, a book that wants you to destroy it?! Of course not – well, sort of, actually,…

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Dino Dubbelgangers at Natuurmuseum Fryslân

Museums

As the train rushes trough the flat landscape, as the towns and villages become fewer and farther between and as the forests of the Veluwe give way to the lakes and fields of the North, I feel strengthened. I’ve lived centrally in the Netherlands for years, but my inner compass still points due North. It’s always worth coming out all this way. There’s always some dinosaur exhibition going on somewhere. Three years ago, it was Denekamp; last year, it was…

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Vintage Dinosaur Art: The Corridor of Life

Vintage Dinosaur Art

The palaeontologist Dr William Elgin Swinton (W E Swinton to you) is perhaps best known, in the context of popular books about dinosaurs at least, for works published by the Natural History Museum (or the British Museum (Natural History) as it then properly was) that featured artwork by Neave Parker. I reviewed such a book back in 2011, a rather dry affair filled with strange ideas that must have seemed a little outdated even at the time. However, it’d be…

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