Animalsaurus: Incredible Creatures from Prehistoric and Modern Times

More than 30 prehistoric animals are the focus of this irreverent outing, which compares them to living descendants. Working in scribbly ink, Russell renders such prehistoric animals as the giant pacarana (a cow-size rodent similar to the capybara) and woolly mammoth in caricatured cartoons, placed alongside photographs of their modern counterparts. Turner doesn’t sugarcoat some of the prehistoric beasts’ appearances: “It looked like a cross between an especially unattractive lizard and a pig,” she says of the Lystrosaurus, whose burrowing habits are similar to those of the spiny-tailed lizard. If readers ever doubted that monsters are real, they need only look to the fossil record—or the backyard. Ages 8–12. (Oct.)