The Dinosaur's Diary by Julia Donaldson

At first, I thought "no way I'm going to read that" because it didn't look very appealing. I thought it would be boring. But actually, once I'd read it (because I had nothing else to read when I was on holiday) I found it was amazing and now I've read it about 4 times!

It's about a dinosaur without a name, but her friends refer to her as 'H'. She keeps on trying to lay her eggs - all 20 of them - but she ends up having to make do with 13. At last they hatch. Oh no - one of her precious little ones has been caught by the farmer! She ends up on a farm (after she's been chased by a Megalosaurus) where she makes friends with some swallows and she's sad when they leave for the winter. At the end she has a ride with a 'Tractorosaurus' (TractoRosaurus - haha!) to get back to the swamp with her babies.

It was a nice, happy story and not too scary.

I liked that it's written as a proper diary and in past tense - it made it feel like I had stolen someone's diary.

Classic Rosa - she rejected this one on the basis of the cover and the blurb on the back, but once she got into it, she loved it. There are plenty of pictures and each diary entry is just a few pages long, so each chunk is manageable for an early reader. 6+ Rosa's Mum

The Dinosaur's Diary by Julia Donaldson

Published in 2002 by Puffin

103 pages