Looking for the best dinosaur children’s books? These picture books about dinosaurs for elementary students are engaging for primary and upper elementary kids. Books with lesson plans and activities linked. Fiction and nonfiction dinosaur books for kids and more for your kindergarten, first, second, third, fourth or fifth grade students. Your students will delight in these classic and brand new books!
If you’re a member of the Picture Book Brain Trust Community, you already have access to EVERY lesson plan and activity for these books! Just click on the Lesson Plans button in the menu!
Dinosaur Children’s Books:
We Don’t Eat Our Classmates
It’s the first day of school for Penelope Rex, and she can’t wait to meet her classmates. But it’s hard to make human friends when they’re so darn delicious! That is until Penelope gets a taste of her own medicine and finds she may not be at the top of the food chain after all.
We Will Rock Our Classmates
Penelope is a T. rex, and she’s very good at it. She also likes to rock out on guitar! With the school talent show coming up, Penelope can’t wait to perform for her classmates. But sharing who you are can be show-stoppingly scary, especially when it’s not what people expect. Will Penelope get by with a little help from her friends?
How Do Dinosaurs…? Series
Come along for some BIG fun as your favorite dinosaurs delight young readers with their playful antics. How do dinosaurs count to ten? Over and over and over again! A perfect companion book to the other HOW DO DINOSAURS tales, and a great baby gift as well.
The Girl and the Dinosaur by Hollie Hughes
Anything is possible and nothing’s as it seems . . .
In a town by the seaside, Marianne is often seen digging for buried treasure on the beach. One day, she finds the most wonderful treasure of all–a dinosaur skeleton!
That night, Marianne makes a wish upon a star that her dinosaur will come to life. She wishes it with all her heart–and it comes true. Together, Marianne’s adventures with her new friend are limited only by their imagination.
Chalk
Three children discover a magical bag of chalk on a rainy day. A fun, exciting wordless picture book!
What the Dinosaurs Did Last Night
You might have noticed weird things happening in your house. Unexplainable messes. Food all over the kitchen floor. Who could the culprits be? Dinosaurs! Boasting bright and hilarious photographs, along with a story written from the point of view of an older, wiser sibling, Refe and Susan Tuma’s picture book documents a very messy adventure that shows just what the dinosaurs did last night.
Dad and the Dinosaur
His dad was not afraid of anything.
Nicholas wants to be as brave as his dad, but he needs help. That’s why he needs a dinosaur. After all, dinosaurs like the dark, bugs are nothing to them, and they eat manhole covers for lunch (and everything under them for dinner).
With his toy dinosaur, Nicholas can scale tall walls, swim in deep water, even score a goal against the huge goalie everyone calls Gorilla. But when the dinosaur goes missing, everything is scary again. Luckily, his dad knows that even the bravest people can get scared, and it’s okay to ask for help facing your fears. It’s just guy stuff.
Prehistoric Actual Size
What is it like to come face-to-face with the ten-foot-tall terror bird? Or stare into the mouth of the largest meat eater ever to walk the earth? Can you imagine a millipede that is more than six feet long, or a dinosaur smaller than a chicken? In this “actual size” look at the prehistoric world, which includes two dramatic gatefolds, you’ll meet these awe-inspiring creatures, as well as many others.
Dinosaur Feathers
Millions of years ago, dinosaurs roamed the shores of Mesozoic seas. They lay eggs in the shade of ginkgo trees, and as time went on, dinosaurs grew, and grew, and grew.
There were so many different species of dinosaurs. Large, monstrous, and fearsome, they ruled the earth. Until gradually, there were no dinosaurs left.
But they didn’t disappear completely. Some dinosaurs had feathers, which grew and grew…until all through the skies were hundreds of species of birds, which flew and flew.
Dinosaur Dream
Late one night, Wilbur hears a tapping at his window. There, standing in the yard outside his window, is a baby apatosaur. Knowing that the dinosaur can’t stay, Wilbur begins the long journey back through time to take him home.
Bravely facing a fierce saber-toothed cat and narrowly escaping a monstrous Tyrannosaurus rex, the two new friends trudge through the Ice Age and past the Cretaceous period, finally arriving at the Jurassic period. Once his long-necked friend is safely home, Wilbur makes the journey forward to his own time atop the largest, most spectacular dinosaur he’s ever seen.
I Spy Dinosaurs
Lots of Fun Colorful Images of dinosaurs.
A cute kid book that teaches the ABC with dinosaurs.
Pages are arranged in Alphabetical order to help your kid recognize letters and relate them to cool dinosaurs.
Dinosaur Encyclopedia For Kids
Dinosaurs are some of the most amazing animals that ever walked the Earth! They could be as tall as a four-story building or as small as a chicken. Some had spectacular spikes or hardened scales, while others had fantastic frills or vibrant feathers. This book gives kids an exciting glimpse into the Age of Dinosaurs with awe-inspiring facts about how they lived, what they looked like, and more.
National Geographic Little Kids First Big Book of Dinosaurs
The third title in National Geographic Little Kids First Big Book series, this book is for kids 4- to 8-years-old who LOVE dinos! The prehistoric world comes alive with dinosaurs small, big, giant, and gigantic, with stunning illustrations by Franco Tempesta―who illustrated National Geographic Kids The Ultimate Dinopedia. Bursting with fun facts and age appropriate information, each spread features a different dinosaur, along with simple text in big type that is perfect for little kids. Young dino fans will love the interactivity included in every chapter, and parents will appreciate tips to help carry readers’ experience beyond the page.
In the Past
Care to meet a dunkleosteus? An apatosaurus? How about the dragonflyesque meganaura? In a collection that’s organized chronologically by epoch and is sure to intrigue everyone from armchair dino enthusiasts to budding paleontologists, David Elliott and Matthew Trueman illuminate some of the most fascinating creatures ever to evolve on the earth. Combining poems both enlightening and artful with illustrations perfect for poring over, this volume ensures fascinating trips back to a time as enthralling and variable as any in our planet’s evolutionary history.
Fly Guy Presents Dinosaurs
Fly Guy and Buzz are ready for their next field trip! And in FLY GUY PRESENTS: DINOSAURS they visit a natural history museum to learn all about dinosaurs. With straightforward text, humorous asides, and kid-friendly full-bleed photographs throughout, young readers will learn lots of fun facts about these prehistoric creatures. Award-winning author/illustrator Tedd Arnold really brings nonfiction to life in this fun nonfiction reader!
My First Pop-Up Dinosaurs
Watch long-extinct creatures spring to life in a striking first pop-up book for budding paleontologists. Showcased are fifteen dinosaurs and prehistoric reptiles, from Ankylosaurus to Velociraptor, each one accompanied by its name and pronunciation. At once simple and sophisticated, Owen Davey’s striking pop-ups, with their geometric patterns of spiky scales, dramatic splotches, and dotted feathers, are sure to mesmerize dinosaur aficionados of all ages.
Saturday Night at the Dinosaur Stomp
Have you ever wondered what the dinosaurs did for fun? What really happened when the Jurassic gang wanted to let off some steam? They danced, of course! They rocked and rolled, they twirled and tromped! They had themselves a Dinosaur Stomp! With illustrations by Scott Nash that leap off the page like a raptor doing the fandango, Carol Diggory Shields tells dinosaur devotees all about reptilian revelry in verses with a foot-tapping, tail-whacking beat.
Tiny T. Rex and the Impossible Hug
Tiny T. Rex has a HUGE problem. His friend Pointy needs cheering up and only a hug will do. But with his short stature and teeny T. Rex arms, is a hug impossible? Not if Tiny has anything to say about it! Join this plucky little dinosaur in his very first adventure, Tiny T. Rex and the Impossible Hug—a warm and funny tale that proves the best hugs come from the biggest hearts.
The Enormous Egg
When twelve-year-old Nate Twitchell takes care of an gigantic egg laid by one of his hens, he is shocked to find that it hatches into a triceratops. Reissue.
Time Flies
Time Flies, a wordless picture book, is inspired by the theory that birds are the modern relatives of dinosaurs. This story conveys the tale of a bird trapped in a dinosaur exhibit at a natural history museum. Through Eric’s use of color, readers can actually see the bird enter into a mouth of a dinosaur, and then escape unscathed
Lulu and the Brontosaurus
It’s Lulu’s birthday and she’s decided she’d like a pet brontosaurus as a present. When Lulu’s parents tell her that’s not possible, Lulu gets very upset. She does not like it when things don’t go her way. So she takes matters into her own hands and storms off into the forest to find herself a new pet.
In the forest Lulu encounters a number of animals; a snake, a tiger, a bear, all of whom don’t particularly impress her. And then she finds him…a beautiful, long-necked, gentle, graceful brontosaurus. And he completely agrees with Lulu that having a pet would be a wonderful thing, indeed! Lulu thinks she’s gotten her birthday wish at last. Until she realizes that Mr. Brontosaurus thinks that she would make an ideal pet for him!
How will Lulu ever get out of this sticky situation without throwing a fit (Mr. B does not respond well to those), or using force (Mr. B is much to tall to bonk on the head with her suitcase), or smushing her pickle sandwich?
Dinosaurs: By The Numbers
Through infographics, illustrations, facts, and figures, readers will learn about the giants that roamed the earth millions of years ago, but that still captivate their imaginations: Dinosaurs.
Discover some of the most fascinating aspects of dinosaurs through astonishing numbers: the varying sizes and shapes of dinosaurs, timelines of when they roamed the earth, charts comparing the fastest dinos with the speedy animals of today, maps of where these giant reptiles lived across the globe, and so much more.
Thomas Jefferson and the Mammoth Hunt
The French feel threatened by America’s new freedom and confidence, as embodied by Count Buffon who claims that the “New World was a chilly, swampy place, filled with puny, scrawny creatures, every species, breed, and race.” Thomas Jefferson won’t stand his young country being insulted, so he sets out to prove Count Buffon wrong. He sends people across the country in search of an animal or animal bones to prove that creatures in the United States are big and strong and worthy.
Best Dinosaur children’s books
What are some of your favorite dinosaur children’s books? Are there any must read dinosaur children’s books that I left out? Let me know in the comments, and I’ll add it!
If you’re a member of the Picture Book Brain Trust Community, you already have access to EVERY lesson plan and activity for these books! Just click on the Lesson Plans button in the menu!
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