The last of my pop-up book splurge, Mega Beasts is almost every bit as good as the Dinosaurs edition created by the same pop up artist team.

The same incredible level of paper art, the same solid writing; my only complaint is sometimes the spectacular paper art actually blocks the text, making it difficult to read without some maneuvering. Otherwise, an awesome example of its kind. ( )

Fantastic artistry with paper are the only words to describe this.

I would use this text as an interactive read aloud for fourth graders. I would use this for an interactive read aloud because everyone could see the pop- up illustrations to know what the prehistoric animals look like, since they would be learning about all of the historic time periods/ eras and who/what lived at the time. Students in younger grades would not be able to understand some of the words. I will assign each student a particular animal to make an informative poster about and then share out loud with the class. Students will use this text to make their poster by draw inferences about what life was like at the time, based on their particular animal, because this text gives descriptions of the animals, what they ate, and how they traveled from place to place based on their description and features. ( )

I would use this book in a 2-5 classroom. Regardless of the age, I think students would be engaged with it because of the visually pleasing pop-ups. The pop-ups allow for a complete visual as to what these extinct animals looked like. I would use this book when teaching students about prehistoric times, or extinct animals. Students would be able to see how the animals appeared. Afterwards, I would have students do a compare and contrast piece. For example, students could compare and contrast a wooly mammoth to an elephant. This would also be a good book to use for evolution. Students would be able to see how animals such as a saber-toothed tiger, have evolved into the tiger we are familiar with today. ( )

This book is an amazing popup book! It has incredibly detailed pop up illustrations that move in a way that brings the creatures it depicts to life. In addition to the main pop up in the middle of each page spread, each spread has multiple other littler popup pages within each page that detail related topics. This book is not a reference book as the title might suggest but more of a survey of prehistoric animals. The information is organized into captions that refer to the popups contained. The content is decently substantial and compliments the very engaging popups nicely. There are no reference aids, title page, or anything of that nature, just cover to cover info and pop ups. This would be a great interest grabbing book to use to introduce the study of dinosaurs or other prehistoric animals. I would definitely use it in a middle school science class.