I’m not one for dictionaries. I have never used them much—except maybe while playing Scrabble with my grandmother, who was a stickler for words being absolutely correct!—and I always thought that it was silly that we needed to look up words we didn’t know in school rather than develop our own understandings about them through reading and context clues. (Did you know that every dictionary is written by writers with their own biases and contexts? That makes a difference!)

Anyhow, I do like photo dictionaries—but not to read them. If my daughter asks to read what’s there, we do, but normally we simply talk about what we see—or even use what we see as a launching point for looking up more material down the line. One such book that we recently checked out from the library is The Visual Dictionary of Prehistoric Life.

First of all, it’s an Eyewitness Visual Dictionary, which is different from any other dictionary. If you are familiar with Eyewitness books, you already know what a treasure they are! They are filled with wonderful photos and facts, and always make for an interesting read. The Visual Dictionary of Prehistoric Life is no exception.

The book is filled with imagery of skeletons, examples of prehistoric life that still exist today, fossils, shells, and more. Graphs and images of what the land on earth looked like during various past periods of life are also included. Examples of life, cell structure, plants, and other areas of interest are provided during different eras of time. In short, no page is boring, and every page is filled with much to talk about and wonder over!

Different types of plant life, from spores to flowering plants, are highlighted, as are early invertebrates. Fish, mollusks, arthropods, and so many other types of early life are shown through both diagrams as well as photos of fossils, when available. Entire skeletons of reptiles are breathtaking to look at, and their skulls are mapped out and labeled for older children who are interested in bones. My daughter was particularly interested in the marine reptiles, which reminded her of “the Loch Ness Monster.”

She also enjoyed the descriptions of the earliest birds of the world; I, on the other hand, loved looking at the dinosaurs, which have always fascinated me. When we got to primitive mammals, we both were captivated, wondering about how these creatures are related to ones that we are familiar with today.

If you have an early history buff in your family—or you just love to learn about prehistoric creatures—this is a must-have book for your library.