Book Review: Secret Stories of Lost Beasts

There are plenty of animals that used to exist on Earth that seem like they aren’t real, but they once were. Kids who love dinosaurs and other ancient creatures will enjoy Secret Stories of Lost Beasts: A Field Guide to Uncover Earth’s Ancient Animals by Sasika Gwinn, illustrated by Vasillia Romanenko.

The book is designed like a field guide showing different extinct animals with detailed illustrations and a paragraph about each one. Here you’ll find:

amphibians
reptiles
dinosaurs
sea beasts
mammals
Ice Age mammals
bugs
birds

Readers will learn about animals like beezlebufo, or the devil frog, who lived alongside dinosaurs and may have been the heaviest frog who ever lived; staganolepis, a plant-eating, bony scaled reptile with a tail like a crocodile and a snout like a pig; mamenchisaurus, thought to have the longest neck of any dinosaur; the Tully monster, a creature so confusing scientists aren’t sure was a vertebrate or invertebrate; juramaia, the oldest known mammal ancestor that gave birth to live young; glytopdons, which looked like giant armadillos; animals of the Bering land bridge like woolly mammoth, Irish elk and giant sloths; the giant dragonfly meganeura monyi; birds with teeth like the woodpecker-like enanttiophoenix; big birds like the giant auk and Tasmanian emu; among many others.

Additional text includes information on things like the giant asteroid, carboniferous forests, the time period known as the great dying, and more.

In the back of the book you’ll find a timeline for these creatures and more recently lost animals, as well as a few endangered species like the deer-like silver-backed chevrotain.

Kids who love animals, especially dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals that are extinct, are sure to enjoy looking at the pictures in this book and learning more about these strange animals that seem like something out of legend. If you want to see if your dino-loving kid’s interests can expand to other animals, this might just be the book to do it.

About the book: 64 pages, hardcover. Published 2025 by Wide Eyed Editions. Suggested retail price $24.99.

Gabon is a country in central Africa on the Equator, which is bordered by Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon and the Republic of the Congo, as well as the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Guinea. Let’s learn more.

Gabon Facts

Gabon has an area of 100,000 square miles, or 270,000 square kilometers and is home to about 2.3 million people. The capital and largest city is Libreville. Almost 90 percent of the land of Gabon is forest, and the nation has huge biodiversity.

The original inhabitants of Gabon were Bambenga, and the Kingdom of Orungu was established there in the 1700s, and France colonized the area in the later 19th century. Gabon gained its independence in 1960.

The official language is French and about 95 percent of the population is part of the Bantu ethnic groups. The majority of people are Christian.

Gabon comes from the Portuguese word gabao, which means hooded cloak. Portuguese explorers in the 1470s used the term to refer to the Komo river estuary, which they said resembled a cloak. Eventually the name spread to cover the whole region.

Gabon is a presidential republic with a legislature, though there have been many disputed elections and, in 2023, a military coup.

Gabon National Symbols

The Gabon flag consists of three horizontal stripes, in green, yellow and blue. The flag was adopted in 1960.

The national anthem is “La Concorde,” and it was written and adopted in 1960 as well.

The coat of arms features a ship on a shield with the same colors as the flag, with three yellow circles in the green section. Above the crest is a large tree, and the crest is flanked by black panthers. The motto, which translated to English is “unity, work, justice,” is below the shield, among the roots of the tree. The slogan that translates to “we shall go forward together” hang around the tree.

I couldn’t find any official national animals or plants, but black panthers are considered a national symbol because of their use on the coat of arms.

Gabon Learning Activities

Did you know black panthers aren’t a distinct species? In Africa they are leopards, but in other areas black panthers are actually cheetahs, bobcats, lynx or other big cats. Learn more about the animals of Gabon at A to Z Animals.

Check out Monts de Cristal, or the Crystal Mountains, home to a large diversity of wildlife (including lots of butterflies) and a large national park. There’s lots of great pictures on that page.

Adventures in a Messy Life has a little Gabon unit study that includes links to some videos, a recipe for African beignets, and notebooking pages available for purchase that you can use for any country in Africa.

Check out this video with interesting facts about Gabon from The African Script.

Find more resources for teaching about Gabon at Teachers Pay Teachers.

Learn more about traditional foods in Gabon from Chef’s Pencil, and check out this recipe for what’s considered the national dish of Gabon, poulet Nyembwe, a chicken dish made with red palm oil (which is what the dish is named for).

Have you read?

Gabon Facts

Gabon National Symbols

Gabon Learning Activities

Leave a Reply