Must-Have Dinosaur Books for All Ages

Very few children skip the ‘I LOVE Dinosaurs’ phase – in fact it’s probably a development phase which should be included in textbooks on child development. The Wild Thing AKA ChickPea has been going through this phase for exactly one year now; it started this day 12 months ago on her second birthday. Nonna and Papa gave her ‘How to Grow a Dinosaur’ for her birthday and having read this book nearly every night for a year now, Dan and I can both recite it…and we now KNOW not to try and skip a page. ChickPea talks to the main character, ‘Albie’ in the book and all dinosaur role play involves phrases from this book. Her second favourite is ‘Edwina: The Dinosaur who Didn’t Know she was Extinct’, and under her bed ChickPea has a baking tray, oven mitt, dinosaur placemat (thanks Jo, Eloise and Patrick!) and a number of magnets which are ‘cookies’ which she bakes each night for Edwina.

Below are other dinosaur picture books ChickPea has loved, loved, LOVED as well as some small chapter books, DVDs and non-fiction books with myself and students at my school LOVE. This list is not exhaustive by any means…it’s just our favourites.

Picture Books

We’ve had to read it every night for a year. Enough said. Buy it.

This was the book ChickPea received today for her third birthday. I adore the rhymic text and the illustrations are typically Christina Booth – exquisite. We wrapped up a dino tail from NoaCakes with this books – so she can match the main character in this book. I think that might be a librarians version of ‘matchy matchy’…matching your children to their books – wait till you see her Edwina the Dinosaur outfit.

‘Edwina: The Dinosaur Who Didn’t Know She Was Extinct’ is CLEVER and I’m yet to find a parent who doesn’t adore this book as much as their child. Reginald Von Hoobie Doobie spends much of the book trying to tell the resident Dinosaur, Edwina, why she doesn’t exist because she is EXTINCT. Mo Willems other dino book, ‘Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs’ is equally as excellent.

 Gorgeous rhythmic text which makes it a delight to read aloud and illustrations by Ann James – all ones needs to say is ‘Ann James’ to know images are stunning. Inspired by the illustrations, we’ve done some mud painted dinosaurs for ChicPea’s birthday party on the weekend.

PudStar and I still count the launch of this book as one of our favourites EVER. ‘Dinosaur Rocks’ is a fab dinosaur adventure and you can read my full review here.

This gorgeous dinosaur books is for the very young and ChickPea is particularly enamoured with the puffy dinosaur on the front cover. It’s a very sturdy production which won’t be destroyed easily by little hands!

‘Dinosaur Roar’ and ‘Ten Terrible Dinosaurs’ by Paul Strickland are LOVED by the kindergarten students in my school library.

I’ve tried to hate this series, but I just can’t. Read why here.

Chapter books for early childhood – middle primary

The ‘Saurus Street’ series have become some of the favourite ‘starting on chapter books’ choices this year in my school library. For more early chapter books see here. The titles below are series titles. For all titles in the series click on the covers.

Non-Fiction

There is of course a pleathora of non-fiction dinosaur books…below are some of the ones I really like.