Dinoblock is a must own for parents of dinosaur kids

“This is a great book and I absolutely love the layout. It’s a shame I can’t think of any way to continue the series”, I said to the book publishers after reading Countablock.  Alphablock was the previous book to that and they’re all by Christopher Franceschelli, with artwork by Peskimo. After Countablock I thought that the next book would be the symbols of the Periodic Table. Thankfully they had a better idea and did one on dinosaurs and Dinoblock is educational, fun to look at, durable and something that kids will absolutely love.

The format to their books is very child friendly. It’s a small square, that’s big enough to be carried in one of their hands and very durable. The pages inside the book fold out. The biggest problem with fold out pages in a book is that this format usually means that the spine of the book will fail quickly. Dinoblock, as well as their other books, have cardboard covers and have all held up 2+ years. That time includes children reading the books unsupervised, turning the pages, putting them away (hopefully) in their book shelf and treating them the way a four-year old does.

The art in Dinoblock has an aura of 50’s retro, but still maintains characteristics that are entirely modern. There are two children that introduce a modern day size equivalent to the dinosaur that they’re about to introduce. When you turn the page readers see an example or two of that dinosaur. Each page has a different cut to its pages so you’re never quite sure what direction or shape our extinct dino friends will be on the next page.

The day after reading Dinoblock our oldest son was playing with Silly Putty in the back seat. “Daddy, what’s this?”, he said as he held up a shape. To me it looked like duck with a really skinny neck that was probably due to pulling the Silly Putty too much. “It’s a Diplodocus!” he excitedly yelled.

The final pages of Dinoblock show most of the dinosaurs, as they looked in their respective periods that readers met through the book. The back cover are double fold out pages that show dinosaurs as we see them today in museums.  These are the skeletons or bones that still help kids realize the size of these massive creatures.

Dinoblock is a really fun book that will entertain ages three and up. I love this stage of our kids. Dinosaurs are such fascinating animals that really keep their imagination going and they are incredibly fun to teach.  I don’t have any illusions that our kids will always be entertained by them, but I sure hope it lasts long enough for us to take a family vacation to South Dakota for a dinosaur dig.