Dinosaurs Before Dark (Magic Tree House, No. 1)
By Mary Pope Osborne
This is the first book in the Magic Tree House series which revolves around the adventures of seven year old Annie and her elder brother Jack. One day, while walking in the woods, the siblings discover a tree house tucked away among the highest branches of a tall oak tree. They are amazed when they discover that the tree house is filled with books. However, these are no ordinary books! Inadvertently, Annie and Jack are whisked away from their home in Frog creek, Pennsylvania and find themselves in the Cretaceous period, the age of the dinosaurs. The siblings realise that the only way to get out of the prehistoric past is to retrieve the book with the image of their home town in it. But they need to get past the dinosaurs first.
The Pterodactyl's Egg
By Annie Besant
One day, Sam found an egg in the sand pit in the park. He took it home where he found out that it was an egg of a Torvosaurus - an extinct bipedal dinosaur which could grow as tall as 36 feet. He hid it in his room and wondered what to do. It hatched and a little pterodactyl showed itself. It was a nightmare for Mom, but the kids were fine with it. Some people have dogs. Some have parrots. Some have fish. Sam and his sister Priya had a pterodactyl.
Meanwhile, the evil Dr. Pox had lost an egg. She was furious. This would ruin her research, which had cost billions of dollars. She wanted the egg back. Fortunately she knew how to get it back.
This book is Chennai based author Annie Besant’s first book for the new Harper Kids imprint and is definitely worth a read. Oh, and there is a sequel coming up.
The Lost World
By Arthur Conan Doyle
Edward Malone, a reporter with The Daily Gazette , will do anything to win his lady love. She tells him that she wishes to marry a man who "could look Death in the face and have no fear of him, a man of great deeds and strange experiences." Malone decides then that he is going to step out of his comfort zone and do something unusual. "It is only when a man goes out into the world with the thought that there are heroisms all round him, and with the desire all alive in his heart to follow any which may come within sight of him, that he breaks away as I did from the life he knows, and ventures forth into the wonderful mystic twilight land where lie the great adventures and the great rewards", he notes. Soon enough Malone finds himself travelling to the heart of the Amazonian jungle in South America, looking for dinosaurs.
