True-Life Monsters of the Prehistoric Skies (World of Dinosaurs)

Gr 4-6-Lackluster, amateurish illustrations seriously mar the presentation of these three books, which otherwise provide fairly good information. Of the three, Prehistoric Skies is the most useful. It explains how pterosaurs flew, what they ate, and, literally, where they "hung out" when they weren't flying (possibly upside down from trees, like bats). Dinosaur Babies updates titles such as Miriam Schlein's Discovering Dinosaur Babies (Four Winds, 1991). Both include similar information about Maiasaurus, but Green's book also covers baby carnivores. However, there's not much new here-purchase only if you lack other books on dinosaur babies. Great Dinosaur Hunters presents an overview of fossil hunters and paleontologists such as young Mary Anning; the obsessively competitive fossil collectors Othniel C. Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope; and the more recent explorer, Roy Chapman Andrews. The biographical information is very brief, and the author omits many intriguing modern dinosaur finds such as Stephen Czerkas's discoveries of fossilized dinosaur skin. Readers would be better off with Shelia Cole's The Dragon in the Cliff (Lothrop, 1991) or Margery Facklam's Tracking Dinosaurs in the Gobi (21st Century, 1997).-Cathryn A. Camper, Minneapolis Public Library

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