The Dinosaur Detectives in The Amazon Rainforest

My granddaughter has been all about dinosaurs since she was 2 years old. She loves telling people she wants to be a paleontologist when she grows up. So I couldn't wait to share this book with her.Matt is the 12-year-old son of a highly respected paleontologist. He wants to follow in his Dad's footsteps. Matt is smart and quite mature for his young age and he has a special ability that cannot be taught nor learned from any book. I guess you would call it a gift - he is gifted! When he touches a dinosaur egg he sees visions of the prehistoric world he wants to study. He basically gets 'first hand' information about the dinosaur, what their life was like, what the earth was like when they roamed here,...etc., etc.Dad, Matt, and his cousin Jo are headed to the Amazon in search of fossils. Matt is beside himself that Jo gets to tag along, being only eleven. . . he had to wait until he was twelve. Uggh. You can definitely tell that Matt is bothered by this. However, his excitement about the possibility of finding a fossil soon takes over. But they are not alone in this search. His Dad's rival is following them. The rival team wants to find the fossils and stake their claim to fame. But they don't want to do all the work.The story lets the reader "see" what Matt sees and does an excellent job of conveying a lot of detailed dinosaur information in an interesting and exciting way. The dialogue is age appropriate, the pace is consistent, the characters are three dimensional and easily relatable. It was a fun read. My granddaughter is almost 7 and she really enjoyed it. She said she wanted to know what they did next. That tells me this is a good book for young readers. If they love dinosaurs, they will love this book. If they have no interest whatsoever in dinosaurs they will enjoy this story. If the latter is the case, they may very well become dinosaur lovers after this trip to the Amazon.Happy Reading,RJ