Familiar information about dinosaurs (when they lived, how they moved, where they're buried) is presented on double-page spreads busy with text, art, and captions. The book also provides keywords (e.g., sauropods) that can be looked up on a special website containing goodies such as virtual tours and downloadable photos. Kids may find themselves so entranced that they won't bother returning to the book. Glos., ind.

Gr 5-8-DK has been publishing books about dinosaurs for a peck of years, including such gems as David Lambert's The Ultimate Dinosaur Book (1993) and Dinosaurs (2006), David Norman and Angela C. Milner's Dinosaur (2004), The Visual Dictionary of Dinosaurs (1993), and Malam's own Dinosaur Atlas (2006). Here, spiffy digital imagery is combined with a terse text to create a visual pathway for readers on the trail of prehistory's star carnivore, Tyrannosaurus rex. This toothy favorite is shown from hatchling to adult, with details on its lifestyle and hunting techniques extrapolated from current theories and recent fossil finds. Words emphasized in the "stepping stone" captions are defined at the bottom of each page. Information boxes on the facing pages cover such related topics as "Blood Vessels," "Revealing Footprints," and "Cretaceous Plants." Certain subjects, such as the Chicxulub meteor strike, the discovery of T. rex Sue, and dinosaur classification, rate spreads of their own. A nifty six-foot-long poster panorama of the Cretaceous sea, sky, and land (which will probably last the lifespan of a mayfly) is included. This series title is a visual recombinant DNA treat that provides digestible information.-Patricia Manning, formerly at Eastchester Public Library, NY Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.

Published jointly by DK and Google, this large volume in the new e.guides series is in DK's handsome, browsable format: one subject on each double-page-spread mix of text, boxed insets, gorgeous color photos, and scientists' accounts of everything from fossil sites to dinosaur anatomy. The information is highly technical, and some pages are too crammed with tiny type. The significant feature here is the book's liaison to a Web site, with keywords on each spread, linking the subject to computer animations, videos, and more. The back matter includes dinosaur profiles and brief biographies of famous paleontologists, that allow readers to access more via a computer link. Excellent for research and personal interest; the technology never drowns out the thrilling content. Others in the series include Earth, Mummy , and Space Travel .