Monday 13 June 2016

Neffy and the Feathered Dinosaurs

Neffy and the Feathered Dinosaurs

By Joe Lillington
Published by Flying Eye Books


This is a picture book with a surprise difference, alongside an adventurous story about a feathered dinosaur called Neffy, there are educational facts about a whole load of feathered dinosaurs from the Creataceous period. This new book from Joe Lillington is based on recent scientific discovery and is a picture book first!  



The story follows a feathered dinosaur called Neffy, a young Microraptor which had feathers evolved for gliding. She lived in a Cretaceous forest in what is now China.

Throughout Neffy's journey, she comes across other feathered dinosaurs, all of which can't fly but have evolved feathers for other reasons. Each different dinosaur she comes across has a short bio and a size comparison to a human being. 

We follow Neffy through the forest as she escapes predators and leads to her first flight to the skies. There she meets the Confuciusornis, a dinosaur that look very similar to our modern birds. They show Neffy how to glide and fly away from danger. Of course we learn that these feathered dinosaurs were the dinosaurs that went on to evolve into modern birds and survive extinction.



Author/illustrator Joe Lillington brings colour and character to all the dinosaurs featured in the story, making the book a joy to read. There's even slight touches of humour which I thought was a nice touch, especially when most dinosaur publications can be quite stale and serious. 



Neffy and the Feathered Dinosaurs is an entertaining story which is a great introduction for children who are starting to get interested in dinosaurs and that period of time. Towards the end of the book there's a glossary explaining words that children may not understand - very useful for going back and explaining these when you come across them. There's also a great size comparison illustration showing the size difference of all the dinosaurs to an adult and child. And to top it all the endpapers double up as an interesting map showing what Earth looked like at this time, detailing where each species of dinosaur was likely to originate from. Neffy and the Feathered Dinosaurs is available to buy now from all good bookshops and from the Flying Eye books website.


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