Children's books and activities
Dinosaurs
Do you know any kids who are fascinated by dinosaurs (and think that T-Rex rules)? We do! And we've gathered up a great collection of books, activities, apps, and websites for learning all about dinosaurs.
Try pairing fiction with nonfiction books and exploring different genres (like poetry and biographies) and formats (like graphic novels and audio books). You'll be creating your own "text sets" — collections of texts focused on a specific topic, such as dinosaurs. Reading widely in this way helps children build background knowledge, vocabulary, and comprehension skills.
Great Fiction & Nonfiction Books
Age Level: 3-6 years old
Print List
Dinosaur Bob and His Adventures with the Family Lazardo
By: William Joyce
Age Level: 3-6 years old
Dinosaur Train
By: John Steven Gurney
Age Level: 3-6 years old
Does Jesse travel back in time or is an imaginative jaunt when he boards a train with a...
Dinosaur!
By: Peter Sis
Age Level: 3-6 years old
When a boy's toy dinosaurs come to life, a whole new world is created in his bathtub. No...
Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs
By: Byron Barton
Age Level: 3-6 years old
Edwina, the Dinosaur Who Didn’t Know She Was Extinct
By: Mo Willems
Age Level: 3-6 years old
How Big Were the Dinosaurs?
By: Bernard Most
Age Level: 3-6 years old
Dinosaurs are endlessly fascinating. Perhaps because it is hard to imagine giant lizards roaming...
How Do Dinosaurs Say Good Night?
By: Jane Yolen
Age Level: 3-6 years old
Ten sleepy dinosaurs get ready for bed in this celebration of funny, endearing, and naughty...
My First Dinosaur Atlas: Roar Around the World with the Mightiest Beasts Ever!
By: Penny Arlon
Age Level: 3-6 years old
Nonfiction
Journey back in time and around the world to learn about dozens of dinosaurs in this colorfully...
Roar: A Dinosaur Tour
By: Michael Paul
Age Level: 3-6 years old
“Millions of year ago, dinosaurs walked the Earth.” Some were small, some walked on two legs,...
Stegothesaurus
By: Bridget Heos
Age Level: 3-6 years old
The third brother was a different kind of dinosaur. Rather than a more typical stegosaurus, he...
Stomp, Dinosaur, Stomp!
By: Margaret Mayo
Age Level: 3-6 years old
Meet massive, wrinkly, stiff-tailed, feathered and more dinosaurs as they stomp, guard, and gulp...
Tea Rex
By: Molly Idle
Age Level: 3-6 years old
Fiction
A Miss Manners–style primer on how to throw a delightfully proper tea party for a dinosaur...
Time Flies
By: Eric Rohmann
Age Level: 3-6 years old
Fiction
A wordless time-travel adventure and a meditation on the scientific theory that dinosaurs were...
Time Train
By: Paul Fleischman
Age Level: 3-6 years old
Join Miss Pym's students as they take a memorable train trip across the U.S. to a time and...
Tyrannosaurus Rex vs. Edna the Very First Chicken
By: Douglas Rees
Age Level: 3-6 years old
Fiction
Tyrannosaurus Rex wants breakfast. He stomps and he roars and he gnashes his teeth ― and he...
When Dinosaurs Came with Everything
By: Elise Broach
Age Level: 3-6 years old
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Print List
Archaeologists Dig for Clues
By: Kate Duke
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Archaeologists on a dig work very much like detectives at a crime scene. Every chipped rock,...
Barnum's Bones: How Barnum Brown Discovered the Most Famous Dinosaur in the World
By: Tracey Fern
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Boy, Were We Wrong About Dinosaurs
By: Kathleen V. Kudlinski
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Chalk
By: Bill Thomson
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Fiction
Join three children who find a magical piece of chalk that begins an exciting series of events...
Chicken Frank, Dinosaur!
By: S.K. Wenger
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Fiction
Chicken Frank wants to prove he’s related to a T.rex ― because of evolution! ― but none of the...
Dad and the Dinosaur
By: Jennifer Choldenko
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Fiction
A father-son story about bravery and facing fears. With his toy dinosaur, Nicholas can scale...
Digging Up Dinosaurs
By: A Aliki
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Dinosaur Feathers
By: Dennis Nolan
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Through rhyming text, learn about the evolutionary link between million-year-old dinosaurs and...
Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Life
By: Anusuya Chinsamy-Turan
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Nonfiction
Showcasing more than 90 remarkable fossils, such as a Tyrannosaurus skull, delicate fern leaf,...
Dinosaurs Are Not Extinct: Real Facts About Real Dinosaurs
By: Drew Sheneman
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Nonfiction
When an asteroid crashed into Earth about 66 million years ago, it killed all the dinosaurs ......
Dinosaurs Before Dark (Magic Tree House series)
By: Mary Pope Osborne
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Dinosaurs: By the Numbers
By: Steve Jenkins
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Through infographics, illustrations, facts, and figures, readers will learn about the giants...
Dinosaurs: The Biggest, Baddest, Strangest, Fastest
By: Harold Zimmerman, George Olshevsky
Age Level: 6-9 years old
The large format of this book is perfect for the theatrical, sometimes spectacular, full color...
Dinotrux
By: Chris Gall
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Millions of years ago, huge, hungry prehistoric 'dinotrux' ruled the world. A terrible...
Encyclopedia Prehistorica: Dinosaurs
By: Robert Sabuda, Matthew Reinhart
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Nonfiction
Information appears alongside beautifully designed pop-up constructions in this overview of all...
Feathered Dinosaurs of China
By: Gregory Wenzel
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Nonfiction
Step back in time 124 million years, inside the world of the feathered dinosaurs to learn about...
Fly Guy Presents: Dinosaurs
By: Tedd Arnold
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Nonfiction
Fly Guy and Buzz are ready for their next field trip as they visit a natural history museum to...
If the Dinosaurs Came Back
By: Bernard Most
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Fiction
What would happen if the dinosaurs returned? A small boy imagines a world where dinosaurs...
Let’s Investigate with Nate: Dinosaurs
By: Nate Ball
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Travel with Nate Bell and a group of kids whose adventure begins at the Science Museum. They...
Mad Scientist Academy: The Dinosaur Disaster
By: Matthew McElligott
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Fiction
The seven new students at Mad Scientist Academy include a werewolf, a robot, and other odd...
Monster Fliers: From the Time of the Dinosaurs
By: Elizabeth MacLeod
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Nonfiction
While the dinosaurs walked the earth, pterosaurs (flying reptiles), ancient birds and other...
My Book of Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Life: Animals and Plants to Amaze, Surprise, and Astonish!
By: Dean Lomax
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Nonfiction
Young dinosaur lovers are introduced to an amazing range of prehistoric beasts through facts and...
My Encyclopedia of Very Important Dinosaurs
By: DK
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Nonfiction
Full of up-to-date facts and discoveries, this encyclopedia includes everything from an in-depth...
My First Big Book of Dinosaur Facts
By: Ruth Owen
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Nonfiction
This book introduces young readers to all key science and facts about dinosaurs in a fun...
Prehistoric Actual Size
By: Steve Jenkins
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Nonfiction
What is it like to come face-to-face with the ten-foot-tall terror bird? Or stare into the mouth...
The Dinosaur Expert
By: Margaret McNamara
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Fiction
Join Mr. Tiffin's class as they learn about dinosaurs big and small, feathered and scaly, winged...
The Dinosaur Museum
By: National Geographic
Age Level: 6-9 years old
This interactive guide takes you on a room-by-room tour of a natural history museum.You can open...
The Dinosaurs of Waterhouse Hawkins
By: Barbara Kerley
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Mr. Hawkins was a 19th century British artist with a passion for dinosaurs. This illustrated...
The Magic School Bus: In the Time of the Dinosaurs
By: Joanna Cole, Bruce Degen
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Everyone's favorite science teacher is back as Ms. Frizzle takes her class on a journey...
The Talking T. Rex (An A to Z Mystery)
By: Ron Roy
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Friends and amateur detectives Dink, Josh, and Ruth Rose set out to help their friend whose...
There's a Dinosaur on the 13th Floor
By: Wade Bradford
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Fiction
There is something a bit unusual about the Sharemore Hotel. When an exhausted Mr. Snore checks...
Age Level: 9-12 years old
Print List
Children's Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs
By: Clare Hibbert
Age Level: 9-12 years old
Nonfiction
Full of fascinating facts and dramatic illustrations, and based on the latest paleontological...
Dinosaur Empire! Journey through the Mesozoic Era
By: Abby Howard
Age Level: 9-12 years old
Fiction
Travel back in time to the age of the dinosaurs with fifth-grader Abby and her neighbor—Ms....
Dinosaurs! (Explorer series)
By: Christopher Lloyd, Nick Forshaw
Age Level: 9-12 years old
Dinosaurs, endlessly fascinating, continue to be explored. Current information is presented in...
Dinosaurs: A Visual Encyclopedia
By: DK
Age Level: 9-12 years old
Nonfiction
The history of all life on Earth, with a special focus on dinosaurs, featuring details of over...
Dinosaurs: Fossils and Feathers (Science Comics Series)
By: MK Reed
Age Level: 9-12 years old
Nonfiction
In this graphic novel, learn all about the history of paleontology! This fascinating look at...
Dinotopia: A Land Apart from Time
By: James Gurney
Age Level: 9-12 years old
Fiction
In this fantasy classic, young readers imagine an isolated island inhabited by shipwrecked...
Fossil Hunter: How Mary Anning Changed the Science of Prehistoric Life
By: Cheryl Blackford
Age Level: 9-12 years old
Nonfiction
With engaging text, photographs, and vivid paleoart, this biography introduces Mary Anning, the...
Knights vs. Dinosaurs
By: Matt Phelan
Age Level: 9-12 years old
Fiction
Renowned for their courage, their chivalry, and their ability to fight mythical creatures, the...
The Age of Dinosaurs: The Rise and Fall of the World’s Most Remarkable Animals
By: Steve Brusatte
Age Level: 9-12 years old
Nonfiction
Think you know about dinosaurs? Think again! Paleontologist Steve Brusatte brings young...
The Griffin and the Dinosaur: How Adrienne Mayor Discovered a Fascinating Link Between Myth and Science
By: Marc Aronson, Adrienne Mayor
Age Level: 9-12 years old
Nonfiction
As a young student, Mayor wondered: Is the mythical griffin based on ancient people’s...
Hands-on Activities
Build on what you're learning together through books with these family-friendly activities, experiments, and crafts.
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Cookie Excavation
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Dinosaur Footprint Template
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Dinosaur Footprints
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Dinosaur Hand Shadows
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Dinosaur Train Geocaching
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Dinosaurs A to Z
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Dinosaurs: What's in a Name?
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Download a Dinosaur
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Evolve or Perish Board Game
National Museum of Natural History -
Junior Paleontologist
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Make Your Own Fossils
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My Favorite Dinosaur
Great Websites for Kids
Dive deeper into topics of interest with these media-rich and interactive sites.
Great Podcasts for Kids
Listen and learn with these podcasts especially for kids. These podcasts are free and easy to listen to from any device via Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or Stitcher — or from Listen Notes, a podcast search engine.
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A Dinosaur Discovery and the Hottest Place on Earth
Fun Kids Science Weekly -
A Dinosaur Special!
Fun Kids Science Weekly
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Can You Dig It
Wow in the World (NPR)
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Dino Explosion!
Sum of All Parts
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Dinosaurs Take Flight! How Birds Evolved to Fly
Wow in the World (NPR)
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Let’s Investigate: Dinosaurs
Home School Hub
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Mary Anning: Dino Discoverer
The Past and the Curious
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Paleo Nerds
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T-Rex Is Coming
Hello Family
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The Call of the Antarctic Dinosaur
Tumble Science Podcast
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The Rise of the Dinosaurs
Tumble Science Podcast
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Underwater Dinosaurs and a Real Life Indiana Jones
Fun Kids Science Weekly
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Velociraptor: Dinosaur Terrorist of the Cretaceous!
Cool Facts About Animals
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World of Dinosaurs
Aaron's World (Season 1)
Educational Apps
Educational apps recommended by Common Sense Media and other trusted reviewers.
More Themed Resources
Growing Readers Tip Sheets
Simple activities for parents and kids to do together to build reading, writing, and critical thinking skills. Read online or print the PDF.
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Capturing and Sharing Images
Download PDF: English | Spanish -
Cause and Effect
Download PDF: English | Spanish -
Journals and Field Notes
Download PDF: English | Spanish -
Making Inferences and Drawing Conclusions
Download PDF: English | Spanish -
STEM Tools at Home
Download PDF: English | Spanish -
The Night Before the Museum
Download PDF: English | Spanish
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