Welcome to the Museum: The Story of Life by Fiona Munro, Ruth Symons and Katie Scott (Big Picture Press)

The "Welcome to the Museum" series of utterly amazing non-fiction books, curated by Katie Scott with Fiona Munro and Ruth Symons now adopts a smaller format, but continues to blaze a trail for non-fiction titles to follow.

"The Story of Life" extends the previous fold-out edition of this title line into a fantastic small format hardback book that may be diminutive in size, but certainly packs a heck of a lot of information in between its gloriously decorated covers.

Once again, we're treated to an amazing and well researched slice of natural history, stemming as far back as the very first emergence of life on our planet, right through to the more complex organisms and animals that we recognise as each era in earth's history ushered in amazing examples of evolutionary diversity.

Having previously been wowed by other "Welcome to the Museum" titles such as Botanicum and Animalium, we really couldn't wait to see how this new smaller format would work.

In fact, as much as we love huge huge books that you need to sprawl out on the floor with, there's definitely something neater about this approach. Books that can easily be tucked into a school bag to take into school and use in lessons are definitely a win for Charlotte, and as we said at the top of the review, there's no paring down of content - which is of course the most important part of any decent Non-Fiction title.

The Triassic Period - Amazing and bizarre creatures emerged, the predecessors of many animals we know today. 

Personally, I just can't get enough of Katie Scott's amazing illustrations, picked out in colour throughout but with that same incredibly detailed 'etched' look about them, instantly making these titles feel like those classic natural history books you might see tucked away in museums.

Meet your great great great great great great great (go on and on for a couple of years) grandparents! 

There are now so many fantastic quality non-fiction titles around that we're really pleased to see Big Picture Press continuing to publish books that really show how it should be done. Beautifully presented, gorgeously illustrated, thoroughly researched and well written, and able to span a huge wide age range, these are definitely keepers whether you choose to buy them for school or for home.

"The Story of Life" by Fiona Munro, Ruth Symons and Katie Scott is out now, published by Big Picture Press (kindly supplied for review).