Gorgeous endpapers adorned with vibrant dinosaurs invite readers to plunge into The Dinosaur Atlas. Tracing the development of dinosaurs from the late Triassic to the late Cretaceous era, this dense compendium successfully conveys a lot of information effectively. Numbered boxes, resembling file cards, detail the important facts of the dinosaur featured on each spread. Girl and boy silhouettes compare kids’ sizes to the featured dinosaurs. The font in “Learning More,” the glossary, and the index is very small, which is unfortunate because a lot of valuable information is presented in these final pages.

“Dino” Don Lessem, author of more than 20 dinosaur books, skillfully explains scientific concepts to children without assuming they know too much. A “single cell” is described as “the kind that’s only visible under a microscope,” and dinosaurs are described as “coffee table-sized” and “pig-like.” “Dino Don” sidebars offer neat facts, share anecdotes, and highlight unusual discoveries. To keep the tone light, Lessem mixes in the odd joke. Some are cute (“This tip-toe stance was not for ballet or even for reaching cookies off high shelves”), but others are silly puns such as the heading: “Dinosaurs Can, Yukon, Too!”

The beauty of this book owes much to its talented illustrator, John Bindon, from Burlington, Ontario. Bold purples, greens, and blues dominate his artwork, but some pieces are polka-dotted, spiny, furry, even feathered! Bindon creates this array of textures in wonderful, almost 3-D splendour. Children might have difficulty recognizing maps that show a portion of a large country, especially when drawings of dinosaurs and fact boxes obscure the view, but most will be motivated to learn more about these fascinating creatures.