The first book in the Unhinged History series is a ripping yarn-full of adventure and deceit-that brings to life the best-known public spat in all of paleontology: the bitter rivalry between Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh. This frenzy of discovery and one-upmanship-known today as the Bone Wars-was a gold rush-like scramble to find the most and "best" dinosaur fossils, thus bringing to glory to their respective home-base universities. Lively and witty rhymes plus wonderfully demented illustrations reveal how the paleontologists' infamous rivalry began, and how-despite making genuine and lasting contributions to the field-their mutual obsession with outdoing one another spun out of control.
The target audience for this Seuss inspired Palaeontology book is Five to Eight year old’s. When I was that age I wanted to be a palaeontologist when I grew up. Ok I really wanted to be a magical princess who could bring dinosaurs back to life and control them, but same-same. I would have eaten this book up a trillion times over. The rhyming is brilliant, it is informative and humorous and the 48 pages are all full of colourful and fun illustrations.
I absolutely adore these type books. The kids will just think they are having fun reading, but they are secretly learning about the early days of Palaeontology.
I will have to pick up a hard copy of this book for my son. I know as he gets older he’ll be a dinosaur lover too. I really do hope that these two go onto to do more books like this together on multiple topics - I’ll be keeping my eye out!
