Everything You Know About Dinosaurs is Wrong by Nick Crumpton, illustrated by Gavin Scott

Everything You Know About Dinosaurs is Wrong by Nick Crumpton,  illustrated by Gavin Scott. Nosy Crow, 2023. 9798887770147

Rating: 1-5 (5 is an excellent or a Starred review) 5

Format: Hardcover picture book

What did you like about the book?  A bit of hyperbola will go a long way in catching kids’ attention, prompting them to unpack some common dinosaur misconceptions. Crumpton, (a zoologist) who works in London’s Natural History Museum, uses each two-page spread to take apart a myth. For example, we can classify dinosaurs as either lizard-hipped or bird-hipped (“Wrong!”), they weren’t very smart (still wrong), or all long-necked dinosaurs looked the same (wrong again). I found a section on hard-to-pronounce names especially helpful. Along with introducing us to species who actually have short and sweet names (the anzu, the minmi, and the thanos), Crumpton also explains that the complicated monikers often include smaller words from Mandarin, Latin, and Greek and can provide clues to a dinosaur’s features.

Scott’s serviceable digital artwork features colorful, faithful creatures, with a bit of personality and humor. He keeps changing things up; some pages feature vignettes with information and labels, other show large-scale biomes that with various creatures interacting. The humans are a diverse lot, with a woman in a wheelchair visiting a museum, and a Black female scientist doing math on a white board. A final myth gets busted with a portrait gallery: “Dinosaurs are just for boys.” Two continuous pages show famous modern female paleontologists from around the world, including Sanaa El-Sayed El Bassiouni (from Egypt in a hijab) and Bolortsetseg Minjin from Mongolia.

Anything you didn’t like about it? No

To whom would you recommend this book?  A great fresh offering for dinosaur fans. Although the look is a bit young, the information (though clear) is high level. This plus the addition of charts, timelines, and phylogenetic trees make this book suited to upper elementary and middle school students, although with its eye-popping colors and textured cover, younger fans with a patient adult will also be able to access some new facts. An index and glossary will make it a good fit for students doing background research.

Who should buy this book? Elementary and middle school, public libraries

Where would you shelve it? 567.9

Should we (librarians/readers) put this on the top of our “to read” piles? No

Reviewer: Susan Harari, Keefe Library, Boston Latin School, Boston, MA

Date of review: November 2, 2023