Encyclopedia Prehistorica: Sharks and Other Sea Monsters

The more Pop-up Sabuda Reinhardt books I collect, the more amazing they seem to become!! Their Encyclopedia series of pop-ups are just beautiful and incredible! Looking at all 3 PREHISTORICA books makes me think of the artistic awe that I always feel watching the Rite of Spring animation in the classic 1940 FANTASIA! That 70 year old hand drawn animation is far more fasinating for me then the cold and stupid JURASSIC PARK movie even though FANTASIA'S dinosaurs would be considered out of date today because of recent research! Besides the drama of survival and it's march to the death of the dieing dinosaurs, Rite Of Spring has gorgeous hand painted, hand drawn art made in the style of Charles M. Knight whose paintings of prehistoric life have been on display in the Natural History Museum in New York City for decades. The pop-ups of all 3 PREHISTORICA ENCYCLOPEDIA books including SHARKS AND OTHER SEA MONSTERS are painted in a streamlined style that reminds me of FANTASIA'S dinosaurs and pleiosaurs. The first 2 page spread has a mini pop-up underneath a prehistoric lobster, that depicts early amphibians, fish and insects in the Paleozoic era before the Meseizoic age of dinosaurs! It even has a frosted plastic in front of the sea creatures to give the effect of being underwater! The next mini page shows pleiosaurs in the water and pteradactyls in the air of the dinosaur age and then the last pages depicted a huge megalodon shark attacking a whale! All this in just this little first pop-up!! WOW!! The next pages display a gigantic crocadile named sarccsuchus that wheighed more then 8 tons and is shown leaping out the water about to swallow an unlucky dino trying to get away!! As I pull open the pages the jaws of the giant gator are closing in on the pop-up dino! It made me think of the huge prehistoric fosselised gator skull in the Natural History museum I saw so many years ago!! A smaller pop-up above the big one has a cameroseras squid that was 36 feet long and that made me think of recent film footage of a real giant squid that I saw on the tv news!! Like the DINOSAURS and MEGA BEAST pop-up books, there are plenty of surrprise pop-ups throughout this book! One reviewer said there is only one shark in this book but if you look at the megalodon shark head pop-up that is beautifully detailed with open pink inside jaws and shark teeth, there is a side pop-up pages that when you open it reveals 3 bizzarre exstict sharks, the helicoprion, the xenacanthus and the stethacanthus, all with strange shapes, teeth and weird fins that would scare the cast of JAWS out of their mind!!I love the choice of colour patterns on their swimming bodies! An undersea kronosaurus pop-up skeleton in swimming position swims in the middle of the next pages! The bone ribbed pop-ups of prehistoric animals in these books are so cool! A pop-up porpoise like ichthyosaur is in the top right pop-up on this page representing fish reptiles! Long Necked sea lizards such as pleiosaurs, mosasaurs and long necked elasmasaurus are rendered in shades of red and blues as they pop-up out of the sea pages in violent action! And a lower horizontal pop-up opens up to reveal a red shelled giant turtle called archelon who weighed more then 10,000 pounds!! Writing this review has been real educational for me and I'm in my 50s! So this book is truly informative and great for all ages! Highly recommended!!

This book is so cool! The pop up images are amazing, so much great information and colors. Made very well, think quality paper. Highly Recommend this!

I bought this for my grandkids, but found my grown kids just as into. Well made and fun to all ages!

He loves this

This is not for the very young child. It's too fragile. But older children and adults will love it!

These are INCREDIBLE. Pay the price. It's worth it. It's not just a pop up here and there, there's pop-ups hidden and it's a great interactive experience for ALL age groups.

My son got this book a few years ago and we still look at it. It has loads of information. We just bought another one to give to a friend that loves all things underwater.

AWESOME! Each of the three in this series are 11/10, mind blowing gifts, for a child from about maybe 5 (or whenever you can trust them with fragile things) up to adults. I think it would be a great way for someone bedridden to pass the time. So many detailed popups, and so much informative writing, that it provides hours of amusement, just for the initial viewing, and can be enjoyed over & over too. My advice is to order early and check every popup, in case you got a faulty one, though it sounds like that is very rare. We now have all 3 & had zero flaws in ours. I don't know how they can offer something this amazing for such a low price. These books are worth three or four times what they cost! Excellent bang for your buck! The only downside is that this will be the best gift you ever give the recipient, so next time you buy for them, there can only be disappointment, LOL! ;-)