Discussing the wide variety of sizes in the dinosaur lexicon, Zoehfeld's simple text presents kids, school buses, and elephants as yardsticks for the measurement of a number of weighty sauropods and lesser lights.... Washburn's eye-catching illustrations... march step-by-step with the text. Included is a double-page lineup of all the mentioned saurians, with a brief note on each one that gives its scientific name, pronunciation, length, and weight. Brightly colored, informative, and on a cherished topic, the book is certain to gather no shelf-sitter dust.

This attractive book from the Let's-Read-and-Find-Out Science series discusses the sizes of various dinosaurs. ...both the text and the illustrations compare the prehistoric animals to more recognizable measures: a standard-size kid (4 feet tall, 75 pounds), the length of a school bus (30 feet), the weight of an elephant (5 tons). ... Just as vivid as that verbal image is Washburn's artwork, apparently done in pastels, which creates scenes that are sometimes naturalistic, sometimes fantastic. ... Well focused and very appealing.

Dinosaurs Big and Small addresses in a child's terms just how big dinosaurs were, and it also teaches how to pronounce those difficult scientific names. ... This beautifully illustrated book addresses a child's need to understand relative size and it is very practical for a child because it relates size to things with which he is familiar. ... Although what the dinosaurs really looked like as far as color and skin texture is still a matter of conjecture, Lucia Washburn has created illustrations that are going to be very attractive to children. ... Dinosaurs Big and Small will be appreciated greatly by children from ages three to six. ...

An introduction to dinosaurs for younger readers, this... title describes big and little dinosaurs.... The author provides size comparisons throughout; for example, Giganotosaurus had teeth “the size of a banana,” and Seismosaurus at 130 feet long was, “longer than 4 school buses.” Soft chalk drawings in buff, blue, and purple, show the kinder gentler side of dinosaurs—even the meat-eaters look somewhat cuddly. The illustrator concludes with a scale drawing of the dinosaurs presented, including an elephant and a human for scale. While there is little new here, this is a non-threatening additional purchase for the dinosaur set.