"Dinosaurs - The Grand Tour: Everything Worth Knowing About Dinosaurs From Aardonyx To Zuniceratops" by Keiron Pim is a remarkable book that stands out due to the highly entertaining and readable prose of Mr. Pim, accompanied by the remarkable illustrations by Fabio Pastori. The combination of their talents creates a unique reading experience that sets this book apart.

This is a fantastic collection of the work of twenty paleoartists. Each chapter begins with a one paragraph biography beside a large reproduction of a spectacular piece of art that is representive of the artist’s work. In tiny print above the artist’s name is the country the artist hails from. The pages that follow present work by that artist and detailed captions with the name of the piece, the medium, and information about the dinosaur(s) that are depicted.

For those who have enjoyed Foster and Frylinck’s Oscar winning Netflix documentary My Octopus Teacher, get ready to love this collaborative work in a new book for children, A Journey Under the Sea.

SUPER DINOSAUR was originally published by IMAGE COMICS as a series of comic books beginning in 2011 and had a 23 issue run concluding in December of 2014. The issues were collected in a series of 4 trade paperbacks that are available in both softcover and in kindle ebook format. The term “trade paperback” refers to a compilation of comic books and they are generally available at comic book stores, through comic book publishers, online and in some book stores.

This collection of paleoart is more than a panoramic view of dinosaurs as they may have lived and died. We have seen that before. This volume is a breathtaking look into the dinosaur world at both the micro and macro level by those who, by extension, might be considered scientists as well as artists. As Philip J. Currie notes in his foreword, scientific illustrators can produce drawings but it is the artist who can flesh out the bones with muscles and skin and make the resulting art look hyper-realistic and dynamic.

The excitement begins with the full color cover illustration of a huge millipede and a dragonfly with a wingspan of 3 feet! The endpapers are an appropriate forest green with silhouettes of various insects that crawled the earth hundreds of millions of years ago.

I’ve been around the block a couple of times when it comes to pitching things in Hollywood and while I can’t say I’m an expert, I know a thing or two about high concept ideas; especially ideas involving dinosaurs. I know the genre extremely well and I like to think I’ve seen just about everything.