A beautifully illustrated book that is jam-packed with information! This book is about the evolution of Dinosaurs into the birds we see and love today. I found the content to be scientific and intellectual. It was easy to follow and read yet not “dumbed down” for the younger audiences. I would recommend this book to both children and adults.

I particularly enjoyed the breakdowns of different species with illustrations, name pronunciation and a brief summary.

A must for any dino lover’s collection, regardless of age.

Here's a fascinating look at how dinosaurs evolved into our common (or maybe not so common) garden variety feathered friends.

Liberally illustrated with lovely artwork, the young reader will learn all about dinosaurs, AND birds, from bone structure to diet to the eggs they laid. This is quite comprehensive, and provides plenty to think about the next time you belly up to the counter at KFC.

Our junior patrons at the library where I work can't get enough about dinosaurs; I can't wait to put this one on the shelf.

When Dinosaurs Conquered the Skies by Jingmai O'Connor is jam-packed with information about feathered dinosaurs, birds, evolution, fossils, and more. The book opens with some interesting facts about different types of birds followed by information about fossils and the geological timeline. The author then delves into the history of fossils, particularly dinosaur fossils, and then begins to link how birds and dinosaurs are related. As the book continues, we are provided with information about bird fossils, the evolution of feathers, and new scientific discoveries related to birds and dinosaurs. Relevant illustrations and diagrams are present throughout the book and help make the information more accessible and easier to understand.

Many children are fascinated by dinosaurs and in recent years, scientific advancements have changed what we know about these ancient creatures. Books like this one are extremely important to have available for children because they deserve to have access to up-to-date scientific information. I highly recommend this book for libraries, classrooms, and families.

Thank you to NetGalley and Quarto Publishing Group for the opportunity to review an eARC of When Dinosaurs Conquered the Skies by Jingmai O'Connor.

A fantastic book for a dinosaur enthusiast.

The book is beautifully illustrated and full of fasinating facts.

The book is good for a wide age range. The younger ones will enjoy looking at the wonderful pictures, whilst there is plenty of interesting reading for the older child.

My kids thoroughly enjoyed it.

This book was for kids older than mine so they were very interested. It had a lot of good information and was really interesting. I would recommend this books to kids 5 years and up. It was cool and had good pictures. .

Love this book! There are dinosaur facts and beautiful pictures – in fact, this book is in the perfect balance of pictures and text. Enough facts to keep the reader interested, and enough pictures to keep it entertaining.

This stunning book is perfect for all your dinosaur-loving young people! It is packed with easily conveyed facts, beautiful illustrations and a fantastic timeline of dinosaur evolution and how they would have made their way into the world of wings and flight.

There are skeletons, discussions on the fossils and evidence found, and more. All of that tells you how scientists came to see the evolution take place and explains why they believe things to be true, even down to the colours the dinosaurs may have been and why.

The illustrations are vibrant, detailed and really being to life exactly what the author is explaining to readers.

The book is both exciting and informative. It is long enough to provide lots of reading time and so many different activities for learning.

Overall, we found this book to be brilliant. It is perfect for day to day learning and reading, but would also be the perfect gift, for a child.

This is the most beautifully illustrated book that is accessible and is user friendly for children aged from 4+. We have recently been looking at the theme of dinosaurs and this came up on our reading list - a fantastic book really for all ages - I learnt so much from it and the facts will astound you!! A great non-fiction text a real must for any dinosaur lover or wannabe palaeontologist!
(Thanks to Net Galley for this Book).

Thank you NetGalley and Quarto Publishing Group for an eARC of this beautiful book. Ever since I read The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World a few years ago, I've been looking forward to reading more about dinosaurs, and I found this an interesting and informative read even if it was geared towards a younger audience. The illustrations were stunning.

I would've liked it more had it included metric measurements and perhaps a bit more introduction about the various geological time periods of the Mesozoic Era, including what the differences were (in Earth and the creatures) between the periods.

My thanks to Quarto Publishing Group – words & pictures for a temporary digital review copy of ‘When Dinosaurs Conquered the Skies’ by Jingmai O'Connor with illustrations by Maria Brzozowska.

This is Book 4 in the publishers’ Incredible Evolution series; its subtitle is ‘The incredible story of bird evolution’. It really was!

Dr. Jingmai O'Connor is the ideal author for this book. She describes herself as the punk rock paleontologist. Her specialty is “the study of theropod dinosaurs with a focus on understanding the dinosaur-bird transition and the evolution of modern bird physiology.”

Learning that birds evolved from the group of meat-eating dinosaurs called theropods, the same group that Tyrannosaurus Rex belonged to, was a revelation even if the theropods that birds evolved from were small.

I grew up with the idea that dinosaurs had become extinct 66 million years ago so it took a while for me to process the information provided by the author about bird evolution and that birds are avian dinosaurs!

While this book is intended for older children (8-12) given the amount and quality of the scientific information it contains I expect that it will also appeal to teens and adults interested in palaeontology.

There is a balance between words and pictures on each page and I felt that Maria Brzozowska’s illustrations were excellent and perfectly complemented Dr. O’Conner’s text.

Overall, a beautifully presented and highly informative book on natural history, the fate of dinosaurs and the evolution of birds.

Thank you, Quarto Publishing Group - words & pictures, for the advance reading copy.

The book is so beautiful! You just won’t believe what you are going to read with all it’s amazing illustrations and the information given in it.

It’s so well done and you will be quite surprised. Yes, we get to learn a lot about dinosaurs and amazing facts about bird evolution.

Just get it.

My inner eight year old loved this book as there's a lot to learn, it's well researched and there's fascinating illustrations.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this arc, all opinions are mine

When Dinosaurs Conquered the Skies by Jingmai O’connor and illustrated by Maria Brzozowska is an excellent look at the evolution of birds from dinosaurs for older kids, filled with lots of broad-ranging, up-to-date details clearly explained and brightly, colorfully illustrated.

The book starts with a few generalities on birds, birds as “living dinosaurs,” the way science works (one of my favorite parts is the note that “A lot of ideas that scientists had in the past have turned out to be wrong … But that’s how science works! … Mistakes are part of the process.”), the geological timeline (with the familiar “if all of Earth’s history were a 24-hour day” analogy), the formation of fossils and their earliest discoveries. Then we get a bit more specificity with a family tree of dinosaurs and a few pages on Darwin and the theory of evolution.

From the point the book focuses on birds, beginning with the famed discovery of archaeopteryx, and then with 1-2 pages on various topics such as why bird fossils are so rare (their light, hollow bones being one reason), the best sites for finding bird fossils (ancient lakes), and some of the world’s best sites (two famed ones in China). One can’t talk about birds without talking about feathers, and so we get multiple pages on their structure, how they evolved and for what possible purposes (insulation, display), and how new technology has allowed scientists to even discover what color some of them were. Then it’s on to the development of wings (feathers predated wings by some time), the debate over whether flight was top down or ground up, the probably surprising to many discussion of how dinosaur flights actually evolved multiple times, a number of one-paragraph descriptions of various types of birds, and sections on aspects of bird development such as eggs, brains, growth rate, and more. The evolution phases end with the development of the earliest modern birds, followed by a section on past mass extinctions, modern birds that didn’t make it to our times, then a discussion of the current “Sixth Extinction” most scientists think we’re living in.

As noted, while the book is for younger readers, I’d say it’s for the older segment of that group, more on the 3-6th grade range, as there is a lot of information and some difficult vocabulary. Certainly younger readers would get something out of the text, but older readers will have a more full experience. Those details, as noted, are nicely up to date, such as the science behind how we can describe the actual coloration of some creatures. There are a few curious orderings where it felt like shifts were a little confusing/abrupt, but only on two or three occasions. Otherwise it’s all quite clear and engaging. Meanwhile, the illustrations are clean, clear, and colorful and clearly distinguish one bird from another.

All in all, this is a quite good work of non-fiction and highly recommended.

This book answers the question: where did birds come from? Most adults know that birds are descended from dinosaurs, but this book breaks down the process for a younger audience, explaining what the first bid was, where feathers came from, why they started flying, and how we got from dinosaurs to the birds we have today. The pages are lovely, full of bright, interesting illustrations and explanations for everything on the page. The pages are set up well, almost like it was designed for the illustrations to catch the reader's eye, then have them read the accompanying text. There's a lot of information covered, but it's broken up into easy chunks, making it possible for readers to read the whole thing, or just pick and choose what they're interested in. This is a must have for any dino fans.

This well developed informative book is a great source of knowledge for many a reader, child or adult.

Featuring lots of detail this is one that science fans and animal lovers are sure to enjoy.

Thank you Netgalley for the advance reader copy of When Dinosaurs Conquered the Skies by Jingmai O'Connor in exchange for an honest review. I requested this book because my nephew is a big dinosaur fan and I hoped he would like it. He loved it and now wants the hardback version for himself!

Thoroughly comprehensive, this will certainly tell the young student all they need to know and more about prehistoric flight, and the birds and proto-birds doing it. How we know how quickly they grew, how feathers evolved, how some critters used four wings – all are here in these pictorial yet very informative pages. Some hiccups about reading order, as with the Galapagos being reached before Darwin was even on the Beagle, and stem/crown species being defined, do hinder things a little, but the rest of this is practically five star material – it certainly introduced me to many terms I'd never read before, and for this target audience that kind of thing is most commendable. In picking so many species that are less common in other prehistory books, and highlighting the grandstanding places the remains are found, this could easily fill gaps on an adult palaeontology shelf, too. Heck, this one didn't know the K-T boundary had changed its name, so there's scope for much learning here.