Journey to the Centre of the Earth Jules Verne (1864)
Should you want to follow in the footsteps of Verne’s intrepid German adventurer, Professor Lidenbrock, then head to Iceland, nip down a volcano and you’ll find yourself in a world of unimagined sights; not least, an Ichthyosaurus and a Plesiosaurus slugging it out. Debate has long raged over whether these creatures (technically not dinosaurs) rule the book out of being the first dinosaur novel.
The Lost World
Arthur Conan Doyle (1912)
Professor Challenger leads an expedition to the Amazon basin to find the dinosaurs he vows have escaped extinction. Fans might also like Greg Bear’s quasi-sequel, Dinosaur Summer (1998).
Dinosaur Tales
Ray Bradbury (1983)
Who better to write the introduction to this collection of dino stories than Ray Harryhausen, the visual effects wizard who created “Dynamation”? Bradbury’s tales include the tantalising “Besides a Dinosaur, Whatta Ya Wanna Be When You Grow Up?”
Bully for Brontosaurus
Stephen Jay Gould (1991)
One of several collections of essays by the acclaimed palaeontologist, Bully for Brontosaurus’s title comes from a disquisition about the challenges of taxonomy and species-naming; the book broadens into a characteristically wide-ranging survey of evolutionary theory, chance and adaptability.
Tyrannosaurus Drip
Julia Donaldson and David Roberts (2008)
Not all dinosaurs are scary, as becomes painfully apparent when a gentle little duckbill dinosaur is accidentally hatched by a family of tyrannosauruses. Nicknaming him “drip” might not come high up on the list of parental empowerment techniques.
