I most appreciated the commendable diversity of species the author chose to highlight in this book. Note here the full body shot of the Velociraptor from the previous image, as well as the enlarged view of the protozoa which can be found on the same page as the sea scorpion.

If you hoped to see more of these particular creatures than close-ups of various body parts, simply turn to the “epilogue” at the back of the book, where you can see a smaller illustration of the entire animal, along with a more extensive description of them. For some animals, this means they easily fit within the borders of the page, while with others, we only get to see a part of them, even with the inclusion of several fold-out pages near the middle of the book. The book contains eighteen illustrations of prehistoric animals rendered at a 1:1 life-sized scale. Prehistoric Actual Size was released in 2005 by author/illustrator Steve Jenkins, and as with Lifesize Dinosaurs, the title pretty much sums up the contents. Since size comparisons are the whole point of the book (and because it was too large to fit in my scanner), I enlisted the help of my son to model the book! (Also I finally discovered Steven Universe and got completely sucked in, but that’s another story!) In any case, I figured I’d get things back on track with a follow-up of sorts to my last post, Lifesize Dinosaurs, with a similarly themed predecessor. Whenever students look at me dubiously and scoff at my suggestion that they read nonfiction books over their summer holidays, Steve Jenkins comes to my aid with his brilliant, brilliant books.I feel like I should apologize for the sparse posts of late I’d been feeling pretty good about the pace at which I was writing book reviews, but then the last few weeks got surprisingly busy and completely ruined my work ethic. Steve Jenkins is a master of creating engaging, enticing nonfiction that manages to educate while also entertaining. The scale of the illustrations, the colour, the detail, it’s all just eye-catching and jaw-dropping and guaranteed to amaze and delight! Just look at that cover!Ĭhildren always respond with a chorus of “ooohs” and “ahhhhs” every time I open up one of these spreads and show them around the classroom.

Dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures are always popular with kids, and this title by Steve Jenkins is one of my favourites to share. One of the things I like to do is showcase some of the incredible variety of genres and formats that kids can discover at the library, especially nonfiction. I’ve been doing a number of school visits in the last few weeks to get young readers excited about Summer Reading Club.

Prehistoric actual size