Bones and ancient beasts have always been a source of fascination for adults and children alike. If you’re looking for armadillos as big as cars, monster sharks or peek inside a gorilla’s skeleton, then I have the book or three for you!
Mega Meltdown by Jack Tite (Big Picture Press)
An absolutely stunning book which introduces its readers to the colossal creatures of the ice age. You’ll travel back nearly 3 million years to prehistoric earth to a time when giant sloths wrestled with sabre-toothed cats.
Journey across the continents and learn about unimaginably huge creatures such as the teratorn with its eight metre wingspan or the giant armadillo with a shell so large that early man would use it as a shelter.
With bold illustrations, punchy, witty text and giant fold-out pages, I can imagine any book enthusiast spending hours looking at this book, noticing more details and learning more facts each time. Truly magnificent.
Forgotten Beasts by Matt Sewell (Pavilion Children’s)
What came after the dinosaurs you ask? Surely nothing anywhere near as interesting. Wrong! How about woolly mammoths, sabre-toothed tigers and Water King penguins the size of a man?
This beautifully produced book has been created in consultation with Dr. Stephen Brusatte and celebrates the magnificent beasts who came after the dinosaurs. Some truly incredible and startling animals feature, many the stuff of nightmares! Interestingly, these beasts were just as susceptible to climate change and clashes with humans as some of our modern-day species.
Clean, uncluttered pages featuring illustrations which make it clear that the beast is the star of the show, simple statistic boxes and witty text full of facts which makes it feel as though the author is just having a lovely chat with you in your home make this book a sure-fire winner with its readers. Fascinating!
Who Owns These Bones by Henri Cap, Raphaël Martin, illustrated by Renaud Vigourt (Laurence King Publishing)
This clever title introduces you to the hidden world of skeletons, from the very largest to the very smallest. A unique study of anatomy for readers aged 7+
A fantastic lift-the-flap book for older readers which cleverly allow readers to identify which skeletons and skulls belong to whom, and to really get under the skins of the animals they’re learning about.
Heads, hands, humans and horns are all explored through stylish illustrations, flaps and conversational text which is crammed full of fascinating facts. Did you know that an elephant’s thigh bone measures a mighty one metre? Or that human babies are born with around 300 bones but that adults only have around 200?
Lift-the-flap books are irresistible to readers of all ages so I’m delighted to see beautiful non-fiction books for older children embracing them as well as pre-school books. Intriguing illustrations interspersed with questions designed to encourage the readers to interact with the book make this bony beauty a real winner!
Library Girl.
*Many thanks to Big Picture Press, Pavilion Children’s and Laurence King Publishing for sending me these titles to review*
Library Girl and Book Boy 
Three really great looking books there, and the third cleverly laid out to be interactive, too.
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