Did comets kill the dinosaurs? /

Gr 3-5 In tackling the question of the dinosaurs' demise, Asimov provides good, basic explanations of how aster oids, comets, meteor showers, and ``Nemesis'' (the dark star) could have played a role in their disappearance. Other information is less useful, and sometimes superfluousa box describ ing the discovery of the coelacanth has only a vague tie-in to the subject. The large print and colorful illustrations make this book more accessible to younger readers than Bates and Si mon's The Dinosaurs and the Dark Star (Macmillan, 1985), although Asimov's book is less informative overall. Asi mov sticks to facts, whereas Bates and Simon's narrative provides more of the reasoning behind the statistics. Unfor tunately, neither book gives little more than passing mention of other theories of dinosaur extinction. Children may well conclude from Asimov's book that the comet theory is the best, or perhaps the only, explanation of the dinosaurs' disappearance. As dinosaur extinction is one of the most heated scientific de bate topics today, students would be better served by Peter and Connie Roop's Dinosaurs (Greenhaven Pr, 1988), which presents explanations of a much wider range of theories of dino saur extinction. Cathryn A. Camper, Minneapolis Public Library (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.