I'm looking at two titles from a new series on dinosaurs today. Given my druthers, I'd avoid series nonfiction like the plague - overpriced, unnecessary library bindings, rapidly outdated, repetitive, etc. However, as I continue to increase our easy nonfiction sections, they are often the only selections available, especially if you need a large number of titles on a particular subject. Like dinosaurs.

Each book starts out with a physical description of the dinosaur, covering several pages. It describes its diet and habitat. It finishes with a picture of its skeleton and a list of the facts on each page, expanded into more details. There's also a list of sight words used in the text.

One of the reasons I'm always a little doubtful about series nonfiction is I'm never sure exactly how accurate the information is. This seems fairly up to date though - no obvious mistakes that I could see. The text is minimal at best and with the list of sight words in the back seems to be aimed at beginning readers, although the books are formatted like picture books.

The digital images show dinosaurs from many different angles with mottled skin and details on their mouths, movement, etc. The backgrounds are mostly digitally manipulated landscapes, but the first picture has a colorful pattern.

Verdict: It goes against the grain to expend so much money on a series with so little information, but this is the age group that gets really into dinosaurs and as we're building neighborhoods I know I'm going to need a lot more information in popular areas like dinosaurs if I want the easy nonfiction circulation to increase. So, it will be on my order list, whenever I get enough money to get it.

Apatosaurus
ISBN: 9781621272380

Triceratops
ISBN: 9781621272410

Published 2014 by AV2/Weigl; Borrowed from another library in our consortium