Book Review: Secret Stories of Lost Beasts

June 30, 2025 by Sarah White Leave a Comment

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.

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Learn about Your Local Birds

Fall is a great time to learn about and observe the birds in your area, but you can do this any time of year. Whether you’re watching from a backyard or a playground, you’re sure to find a few birds and can learn about the birds that are native to your region in any case.

If you do see birds at home or where your classroom is, the Merlin app is a great one (if your school allows phones). If you don’t already know it, it listens to the sounds around you and can identify birds based on their calls. Very cool and a reason for kids to be quiet while you’re observing nature. Having an old fashioned paper guidebook to the birds where you live is also a great idea because kids can use it to look up birds and it’s just fun to have in the science center.

The specific birds involved in your learning will vary depending on where you live, but here are some bird activities you can do with your kids at home or in the classroom.

Natural Beach Living set up a simple bird nature study center that includes bird books and feathers in front of a big window. There are also some printables you’ll find links to in this post including three part cards and bird observation charts for birds local to them and a bird unit study with lots of great printables (this is a paid resource).

Adventure in a Box has a printable birds of the world bingo game, which might inspire you to learn more about some of the 48 different birds included, from emu to snowy owl, grackle to Atlantic puffin.

If you’re American you’ll enjoy these state bird coloring pages from Flanders Family Home Life. If I can count, only 48 states are listed (which I wouldn’t have noticed except Arkansas isn’t there; it’s one of many whose state bird is the mockingbird). Print out all of them or just your home state, or give each child a bird to research and color to do a presentation in the classroom.

And you can learn more about the different types of bird nests and see if you can observe any of them on a nature walk with this guide to bird nests from Fun Mom Printables on Etsy. It includes information about eight types of nests with drawings and three part cards.

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