Dinosaurs Don't Die
Encyclopedia
John Vernon Lord
John Vernon Lord is an illustrator, author and teacher. He has illustrated many classical texts, including Aesop's Fables, The Nonsense Verse of Edward Lear; the Folio Society's Myths and Legends of the British Isles, and Epics of the Middle Ages...
. It tells the story of a young boy, Daniel, who lives opposite the Sydenham Hill park in South London
South London
South London is the southern part of London, England, United Kingdom.According to the 2011 official Boundary Commission for England definition, South London includes the London boroughs of Bexley, Bromley, Croydon, Greenwich, Kingston, Lambeth, Lewisham, Merton, Southwark, Sutton and...
where the Crystal Palace
The Crystal Palace
The Crystal Palace was a cast-iron and glass building originally erected in Hyde Park, London, England, to house the Great Exhibition of 1851. More than 14,000 exhibitors from around the world gathered in the Palace's of exhibition space to display examples of the latest technology developed in...
was moved after the Great Exhibition. At night the boy notices that some of the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs
Crystal Palace Dinosaurs
The Crystal Palace Dinosaurs, also known as Dinosaur Court, are a series of sculptures of dinosaurs and extinct mammals located in Crystal Palace, London. Commissioned in 1852 and unveiled in 1854, they were the first dinosaur sculptures in the world, pre-dating the publication of Charles Darwin's...
, models created by sculptor Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins
Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins
Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins was an English sculptor and natural history artist renowned for combining both in his work on the life-size models of dinosaurs in the Crystal Palace Park, Sydenham, south London...
, come to life. He befriends an Iguanodon
Iguanodon
Iguanodon is a genus of ornithopod dinosaur that lived roughly halfway between the first of the swift bipedal hypsilophodontids and the ornithopods' culmination in the duck-billed dinosaurs...
whom he names "Rock".
Hawkins' models of the Iguanodon mistakenly portray the large thumb spike as a nose horn; also, the dinosaurs are shown as quadrupeds rather than bipeds and these mistakes are faithfully reproduced in the book. The book is no longer in print.