The Big, Bad Book of Beasts

by Michael Largo
Hennepin County Library paperback 427 pages
genre: non-fiction and fantasy creatures

I got this book based on a review in the BookPages magazine. I was curious to see if I should buy it for PRMS . . .

It is a very interesting and well-written book, but I don't think I'll buy it. The illustrations are black & white and the alphabetical entries are written in such a way that it's almost difficult to know which creatures are real, historical, or mythical. Some of my students would be absolutely baffled by this book. If my boys were younger or I had grandchildren in elementary school, I would definitely buy it.

I've already returned it to the library, but I'll quote part of the review that initially piqued my interest:

"Michael Largo puts the 'best' into this 'bestiary' - the medieval bookish art of gathering encyclopedic information about unusual animals into a beautifully illustrated volume. The Big, Bad Book of Beasts: The World's Most Curious Creatures remains faithful to its alliterative title through its fun alphabetical juxtapositions of creatures as diverse in their size and actual existence as the badger, the bagworm and the banshee, or the caladrius, the camel, and the capybara. You've never heard of a caladrius or a capybara? Well, once you've seen the gloriously old-fashioned illustrations of these critters - from sources ranging from ancient Egyptian sculpture to a Victorian science manual - and once you've read the delightfully definitive descriptions, you'll never forget them, nor will it matter to you that the capybara is real (it's the world's largest rodent!), while teh caladrius is a creature of Roman myth (a bird who could tell you how close to dying a person was by the way it would sit on that person's deathbed)."

Lovely!