Book Review: Chronicles of Dinosauria

This beautifully illustrated book introduces you to a broad overview of what we really know about dinosaurs from the world around us and the Bible.

The author, Dave Woetzel, keeps a website just on dinosaurs and has done a lot of research about the history and evidence of these creatures since the Flood. Richard Dobbs’ dinosaur illustrations are entrancing and detailed enough to hold kids’ attention while you read to them.

The beginning of the book covers the basics, like what are the limits of change in living things? And, could the fossils we find actually be millions of years old, or does it make more sense for the soft tissue we find in them to be only as old as the Flood? Everything is broken into small chunks which works well for presenting to young audiences.

After the first dozen or so pages, the book moves on to the area where it really shines: evidences of dinosaurs and man having met. He doesn’t have room to cover as many artifacts as Dire Dragons does, but what is included serves its purpose well.

My favorite aspect of the book was the way he affirmed some of the best known controversial evidence as reliable. I won’t spoil it for you but a few examples I’ve covered here along with some the big creation groups leave alone (they get enough hate mail as it is) are in here.

The last section of the book talks about possible survivors. Nessie is there, along with the longneck  thought to live in an African swamp, and even pterosaurs are included. It would be fun to someday be able to visit some of these at a zoo, but could you imagine the kind of work required to make a comfortable exhibit area for them?

Unfortunately, the vocabulary and sentence style isn’t designed for young ones. I’d asked my 9yo bookworm to read the book and let me know what she thought when it first arrived. She lost interest before getting far at all. This is not a book you can just hand an average child and expect them to devour over and over again.

I’m guessing a 12 year old would be the youngest (except for some dino junkies) to get sucked in and not put the book down until the whole thing was read.

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of the Chronicles of Dinosauria in exchange for my honest opinion. If you want to see other reviews, you can search New Leaf Publishing Group’s blog post link up.

“What do you think of the book, kids?”

6yo son, “I think it’s really cool,” and wanders off.

9yo daughter, “I think the pictures are just awesome.”