BIGFOOT AND OTHER LEGENDARY CREATURES

A perfunctory introduction to seven ``monsters'' that might or might not be hiding out in some of the world's wilder places: the human-like Bigfoot, Yeti, and Mongolian Almas; Nessie, and Lusca, the giant octopus; the dinosaurian Mokele-Mbembe and the huge winged Kongamato, both of tropical Africa. All get unskeptical essays describing efforts to track them down and identify them, prefaced by fictional encounters—Bigfoot briefly kidnaps a young hunter; Kongamato buzzes a white man who spurns the protective magic of his native guide; a young Sherpa and her grandfather bait a trap for Yeti with beer; etc. Walker is no storyteller; though his language is sometimes lurid (``Between the tall trees, gnarled manzanita bushes grow like blood-red demons''), the episodes have a sameness—the monster appears, makes menacing gestures at a terrified human, and departs or escapes. Noonan's small, undetailed portraits lend some drama but are more suggestive than accurate; Kongamato, for instance, is seen with a long tail, though it's described in the text as a pterodactyl (and therefore tailless, or nearly so). Supplementary at best. The annotated bibliography, characteristically, mentions none of Daniel Cohen's books. (Nonfiction. 10-13)