Dino-Mike, action/sci-fi reading for young readers

Mike Evans is your typical 9 year old kid. He looks up to his dad, who is a world renowned paleontologist who travels the world. Thankfully for our title character Mike has the habit of finding adventure, usually in the form of reanimated dinosaurs. Sometimes it’s a shadowy character pulling the strings, time traveling or meeting new friends who might factor into the story somehow. Dino-Mike is a continuing mini-series of books that will appeal to kids in upper elementary through middle school who like action, science fiction, dinosaurs or travel.

That’s a rather wide range of interests, isn’t it? To boot, Dino-Mike is good for boys or girls and should be interesting to both genders. These books do appeal to boys more than girls, but they’re not overly ‘boyish’ in the way of Captain Underpants or Wimpy Kid.  In The Dinosaur Cove and The Living Fossils, book six and five in the series, Shannon a friend of Mike’s is along for the adventures. There is also a female character, Mrs. Li Jing that may, or may not be as gentle as she first appears.

These books are written in a fun, direct manner that young readers will be able to embrace and understand. The font is larger than average and some pages are accented with illustrations. The Dino-Mike series is from Franco Aureliani, who is better known as Franco! He’s the Eisner Award winning writer of Tiny Titans, Superman Family Adventures, Aw Yeah Comics, Action Cat and others.

The story in the Dino-Mike books that we read are big, cover lots of plot twists and seemingly always moving. Once the story is established Mike and whoever is with him get down to chasing evil, finding bones and having fun, all the while keeping his dad in the dark about his adventures.

Readers in early or middle elementary might find the Dino-Mike series challenging to read on their own.  Our 6 year old likes to read them, with our help. The chapters vary in length, but are around 18 pages. Consider that some pages have art and the text is big, that chapter length seems long but it flies by quickly.

In future books Dino-Mike is will travel to Antarctica, the moon and any other place a paleontologist could possibly travel.  They priced at $5.95 each, so collecting the series isn’t cost prohibitive for parents.