Amazing Automata -- Dinosaurs! (Dover Crafts: Origami & Papercrafts)

These came pre-cut so it was an easy start with the models. I built these for the grand baby who loves pop up or interactive books.

These are not for novices, although with some skills these models are very workable. Pre-punched and scored pieces make the building easier. For the nube I suggest building some simpler downloadable like the free Cubee Crafts or Canon Creatve Park builds. One thing I would like to see is the models be printed on a heavier card stock.

We purchased two copies of this book for the grandchildren ages 8 and 6. (Two copies to keep them from arguing about who-gets-to-do-what.) The pieces are easy to remove from the book (not always the case with other punch-out books), the printing is excellent, and the resulting dinosaurs provoke hours of fun after their assembly. The children are curious, too, about what makes them work. Perhaps we have engineers in the making.

I have put together over 1000 paper automata and paper toys and this is the worst. The paper is to slick to glue, the instructions are unfollowable, and the pictures do not match the provided parts. The parts that should move, rub and do not fit or move. The persons or person who desighed this should be ashamed.

This book is horrible. I was so excited to get this for my 7 year old. It looks fun, very bright and colorful. The items are easy to punch out. But, I had to do it all. It was super frustrating for me and my son. He can put together 1000 piece Lego sets by himself, but not this. I would not recommend purchasing this for any age.

These are very hard for children to assemble. To be honest, they were challenging for my husband and I also.

A great book for indoor fun and dinosaurs. The dinosaurs fit in your house and are automated.

I got it as something to do with my six-year old, but I ended up doing all the work; he still enjoyed punching out shapes and doing the folding, even if I was doing the gluing & parsing of instructions.For the most part, these paper creations are pretty amazing; it's often not obvious until you put the final parts in place what sort of movement you'll get when you crank the handles. However, the instructions are often a little more vague than they'd have to be, and it requires a fair bit of fine motor control to do some of the delicate gluing. On just about every model, there was one point where I realized I had misread a step or missed a sentence - the instructions could have benefited from more diagrams and less text. Occasionally the instructions violated their own rules - when gluing numbered sections together, you ALMOST always glue the side with the labels on them together, but there were a few times this was not the case.One model in particular (pachycephalosaurus) I had to cut apart and re-glue, as well as reshape several pieces, before it would finally work without binding or tearing itself apart, and ironically, it's the simplest of all the mechanisms (a simple up/down piston pushing on a see-saw body). It also required some clay in the nose to give it enough weight to fall down into position.

I have gotten stuck at the third step. I want more detailed pictures. Antomata are a great building toy for young adults and adults to make. This book is especially good in that the pieces are pre cut. It is very detailed, and needs better instructions. I would rate this book higher if the models had better instructions. Maybe buying two books would be good, or using one of the models as a ginnea pig to make mistakes with. All the models are similar until you get to the theme of the specific model, and put together the actual type of Dinosaur.There is a "sister book". I would love to see a Christmas decoration book just like it.