Dinosaur Rescue: Book of Stuff product reviews

The picture shows my four year old browsing through "Dinosaur Rescue Book of Stuff before bed. What great entertainment this book is!! The topic of dinosaurs is a winner with kids and it seems to be of particular interest to boys.

This is actually my first experience of a Donovan Bixley book, although I have heard a bit about him and it has all been good! It was a pleasure to have the chance to share this book with our four year old dinosaur lover. It has been a book that we have picked up every few nights and spent quite a bit of time giggling together while reading it. Interestingly enough, he loved the book but didn't want to read it every night. I imagine the lack of big bright pictures meant that he had to be in the right mood for a lot of listening and talking rather than listening while looking at colourful images. The fact that the book has black and white drawings is not at all a negative, just requires a different frame of mind for a four year old to be in in order to settle down to a session with it. I would think than an older child wouldn't have the same issue as they would have the ability to read and enjoy the text all by themselves.

The illustrations are comical and cartoon-like. The pictures tell a thousand words and are enjoyed for our four year old even when he doesn't have an adult to assist with what the text is telling him. I have a nine year old nephew, who loves dinosaurs too and I think this book would be a perfect choice for him. I could see him going away on family holidays with his nose stuck in this book.

Our four year old loves making up names for things and combining several names or words into his own creations. The section in the middle of the book really appealed to this interest and allowed him to bits of dinosaur names and make his own ones. He also loved figuring out which dinosaur did which poo. Amazingly enough he managed to match up all the poos with the correct dinosaurs!! This book really is right up the alley of my son.

The book is a nice mix of factual information, humour and creativity. It is the sort of book that you can move through as you choose and doesn't need to be read from the beginning to the end. I think it is a book that guarantees laughs for everyone who reads it and a great way to finish the day as a child heads off to bed happy and full of imaginative thoughts.

The book of stuff was given to my mum to review which means I got to read it too. Its one of the funniest books I've read this year. Its not in colour its all black and white even the pictures but that doesn't matter because there is just so much in the book to do so you don't notice there's no colour. I'm a boy so it reminded me of a comic book a wee bit (black and white).

Its full of these fun quizzes which have the weirdest questions and probably the weirdest answers to. I was doing the quizzes by myself and laughing so hard cause it was really random. There is a bit where the page is split in half down the middle and there's dinosaurs on the page and you can turn half the page (front or back) to make new dinosaurs and new dinosaur names but because of how the page is cut I did rip one page when turning it :(

The book of stuff is really neat and would make good Christmas presents for any kids even my 7 year old sister laughed at the stuff in. My dad read it and he thought it was great to.

We are all huge Donovan Bixley and Kyle Mewburn fans in my home, having read and own the entire series of Dinosaur Rescue books, among others written/illustrated by these guys. My children are also very proud owners of two books personally signed with personal messages and signature from both. So the excitement when the book of stuff arrived was of no surprise, but the battle of who got first read was Miss 7 won, and to make sure her brothers did not sneak it away from her before she was finished, she even took it to school.

This is a fab wee book, full of lots of, well stuff! It is one if those ones that entertains the whole family with its silliness. Their is random info, quizzes, a tree house, dino facts, word finds and more. It has entertained my family for hours! There is just so much inside the as always intriguing and colourful covers. The illustrations are in black and white but this does not diminish the awesomeness of this fab book of stuff by any means.

Kyle Mewburn and Donovan Bixley always produce fantastic work when they work together, and this one is no exception. In fact it is probably my favourite of theirs so far. A definite crowd pleaser no matter the age and also the perfect stocking stuffer or small gift too.

However I must confess, it did leave us questioning ourselves, for are we part Grogllgrox or are we in fact just a disgusting family? Wondering what on earth a Grogllgrox is, well you are just going to have to buy the book to find out aren't you But do not worry...it is worth every cent!

Dinosaur Rescue is a series of books that we have read in its entirety. We love them. My daughter really relates to Arg, and his interest in dinosaurs. His adventures, rescuing dinosaurs and befriending them is something she is quite passionate about. It's a series of books that I can just open and start reading aloud and know she will come over and sit with me. They are also filled with bodily fluids and accidental interaction with those fluids. That gives it extra kid-cool factor, even if it grosses us out.

The Book of Stuff is an activity book that fits with the series. It's almost like an Annual, which is a type of book I grew up with and adore. Inside this book there are quizzes on all sorts of things. We had giggle fits as I tried to talk Neanderthal. They describe how-to in the book and it sounds hilarious. My daughter had great fun trying to figure out what I was saying. There is another activity where you can get your Neanderthal name. My daughter's name was Aa-ar-ger. From this we could also work out that Arg was good-looking, born in the cold and it was a good day. Hng was ugly.

The Spot the Difference was brilliant. Bixley's art really shined in this one, even if it was in black and white. There were 20 differences to spot and it took us quite some time to find them all. There were easy ones and then others were very tricky. The who's poo? quiz got our brains thinking and a few giggles out of the girl as well. There's a mix and match dinosaur builder as well which was my daughter's favourite part.

The fun facts around Neanderthal life, diary entries, and other bits and pieces were clever and worked in well with the information we knew from the books. My daughter loved listening to these bits. The only bit I didn't really like was the "normal girl's brain" diagram. Neither my daughter or I fit that kind of "normal". However, I did understand it was a joke. My daughter was very keen to draw her own brain with sections for dinosaurs and birds and the colour blue.

My kids and I have yet to read any of the books in the Dinosaur Rescue book, but when I saw this come up for offer to review I simply had to request it as my son is mad about dinosaurs. Book of Stuff is an activity book based around the book series.

I loved the Dinostrology and my son was keen to figure out who was which in our house. He and his Granny are Tuatara's, I'm a Dracorex, Daddy is a Ammonite, one sister is a Dimorphodon and the other is a Spinosaurus. The one activity that I didn't like and was mostly ignored by my son was the "How Neanderthal is Your Brain?" activity where you have a normal boy's brain and a normal girl's brain, neither fitted any of my children and while I understand that it's an easy thing to do, here's a boys brain, here's a girls brain, it just doesn't fit our family.

Another favourite was the Dinosaur Mash-up pages and so I am planning, when the book is all completed, to pull out these pages, colour them in and then laminate them so that my children can play with them over and over again, the back of them will have their own dinosaur creations, making it a fun game that they can do over and over again.

I asked my son, after some more work through the book, what he liked the most and it was the "How to Draw Skeet" pages and is keen to practice lots more so he can show off his dinosaur drawing skills off to family and friends.

This is a really fun book, well done to draw both kids and parents into it. My sons birthday is next month and I'm thinking I may need to buy the first couple of books in this series for him.