Small Readers: Incredible Dinosaur Facts by Ruth Owen

This is from a Bearport set called The Dino-Sphere, part of their Little Bits! first readers series. The Dino-Sphere has ten books, ranging from books about modern paleontologists, fossils, and overviews of different aspects of dinosaurs from their eggs to their extinction.

This title is a general collection of facts about dinosaurs. It covers their name, general time period, and a variety of unusual dinosaurs - the biggest and smallest dinosaurs, most horns, hardest skull, smartest, etc. Illustrations include artist's depictions of dinosaurs, photographs of fossils, and models. Back matter defines four words - crest, fossils, mate, and scientists. There is also a short index, two books (both from Capstone) to read further, a link to the publisher's website for the series, and a brief note on the author.

The book is physically not the traditional size of easy readers; it's an 8x8 square. Little Bits is marketed to "beginning readers" but the vocabulary and text complexity is actually much higher than that. It comes in at a 600 lexile and the highest I put in my easy readers is between 500-600. It needs a fairly competent reader to tackle these books.

Verdict: While I wouldn't necessarily recommend these as easy readers, they're perfectly acceptable picture books and that's exactly what I needed. My dinosaur picture books needed new titles and these have been flying off the shelf. I think they will also be popular when we get back to school and teachers and younger kids are looking for books to read together or browse.

ISBN: 9781642801866; Published 2019 by Bearport; Review copy provided by publisher; Purchased set for the library