Reddit mentions of The Dinosaur Heresies: New Theories Unlocking the Mystery of the Dinosaurs and Their Extinction

This is probably your best bet. There is a lot of literature out there on this, but just to name a few sources:

UCMP Berkley has a pretty decent overview.

If you can get a hold of it at your local library, The Dinosaur Heresies by Robert T. Bakker helped popularize the notion, and his prescience may help you out a bit. It's dated, but the chapter on dinosaur-bird similarities holds up pretty well today.

Tom Holtz's Dinosaurs has a couple chapters detailing metabolism and bird evolution that should pretty useful.

Finally, there are a lot of paleontology blogs out there written by working paleontologists that talk about this subject in great depth. Use Dave Hone's Archosaur Musings as a starting point then search for your desired subject using the search box, and for more simply check out the links to the right of the page to go to other fairly reputable sites.

Happy homework!

Anything by Stephen Jay Gould for evolution, zoology, and earth science. Some of the science is dated - he passed in 2002 - but he always gives a comprehensive read of his subject material without being dry or overly academic.

In particular, Wonderful Life tells the story of the Burgess Shale, which details the discovery of a trove of unknown extinct species. The science has been updated since - see The Crucible of Creation - but Gould tells a better story.

Along these lines, also check out The Dinosaur Heresies by Robert Bakker.

Ok ok.. well The Dinosaur Heresies isn't an encyclopedia, but Robert Bakker is the wild man of dinosaurs. I see he has a Picture book. Still, that part where the dinosaur lifts up the roof of Danny's house, that is classic.