More eye candy than reference tool, but young monster hunters may find some fresh quarry.
A gallery of strange creatures of lore, from dragons to eaters of gold and dreams.
Capped by a sinuous dragon on a double gatefold, Auerbach’s translucently hued figures are more graceful than fearsome, but the chimerical ones—particularly the scorpion-tailed Girtablilu people drawn from the epic of Gilgamesh and the Mahabharata’s Navagunjara, made up of parts of nine creatures—are appealingly bizarre. His 20 alphabetized selections, which span the globe, include unicorns, griffins, the golem, merfolk of several varieties, a benign nightmare eater from Japan, a Chilean bird that consumes precious metals, the wildlife-protecting Mimi of Arnhem Land, and Te Ika-a-Māui, a truly large fish that became New Zealand’s entire North Island. The visuals have to carry the load here, however, since despite appending brief references to older sources of information about each entry in a closing section, all that he offers to accompany the pictures are a few perfunctory descriptive notes or explicated legends drawn, to judge from the booklist at the end, from secondary sources. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
More eye candy than reference tool, but young monster hunters may find some fresh quarry. (Informational picture book. 7-10)Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-316-33187-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Christy Ottaviano Books
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2022
Should make a huge splash with young mariners and monster lovers alike.
A rousing gallery of toothy and tentacled terrors of the past and present.
Along with creatures of legend, from the leviathan and the kraken to Nessie, Chessie (who supposedly lives in the Chesapeake Bay), and Champy (an alleged resident of Lake Champlain), Clarke describes with bone-crushing relish a selection of “Real-Life” and “Wannabe Sea Monsters”—such as prehistoric Dunkleosteus, which “had the strongest jaws of any fish ever. Slice! Dice!” (“It could have crushed a human like a bug!” the author continues.) While it may be stretching a point to link the Hydra of Homeric myth to the giant Pacific octopus, Clarke’s claims that supposed mermaids were really manatees or Steller’s sea cows and that kraken were giant squid are at least feasible…and there would likely be few to argue with her closing claim that Megalodon was “the scariest sea monster of all time.” With a few exceptions the accompanying mix of photos, digital art, and public domain prints seems staid in comparison, but the narrative, laced as it is with “Crunch! Munch!” sound effect words, injects more than enough melodrama to make up for the visuals.
Should make a huge splash with young mariners and monster lovers alike. (Nonfiction. 8-10)Pub Date: July 5, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-38394-0
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers
Review Posted Online: April 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2022
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