The six volumes of the Dinosaurs! series make up a useful reference source for peewee dino-maniacs, providing a quick and dirty—but not scanty—look at a large cast of characters just waiting to be incorporated into kids’ drawings, stories, or nightmares. This entry focuses on the maniraptora group of theropods: the winged, beaked, clawed, and often serrated-tooth killers made infamous by Jurassic Park. Each double-page spread devotes its top two-thirds to computer-aided illustrations of the dinos in action, while the lower third is given to a succinct description of the animal’s name (compsognathus means “dainty jaw”), physical traits, region, fun facts, height and weight stats, and, most amusingly, a small picture that introduces the dino to a woman and her brave cat to lend a sense of scale.
