Big Book of Dragons, Monsters, and Other Mythical Creatures
Ernst and Johanna Lehner
Dover
Nonfiction, Art/Folklore
****
DESCRIPTION: A collection of historical images of fantastic creatures is augmented with brief descriptions. The images are copyright-free.
REVIEW: I rated this by averaging the quality and variety of the artwork with the quality and accuracy of the text. The latter was the weak point. It contradicted some of my other sources on fantastic beings, and has at least one false caption that I know of, which makes me suspect some of the other captions. As for the artwork, it had many images of fantastic creatures that I don't have elsewhere, which is good; some clip-art books get repetitive, so it was nice to see new (or new to me) material. If you're looking at this just for the pictures, I can recommend it. If you want actual information on fantastic creatures, I suggest looking elsewhere, or at least not relying on this book alone.
You might also enjoy:
Fabulous Beasts (Malcom Ashman, Art - An artist's bestiary)
Mythical Beasts (Alexandra Bonfante-Warren, Nonfiction - Mythology bestiary)
The Encyclopedia of Monsters (Daniel Cohen, Nonfiction - Puzzling cryptids, fabulous beasts, strange encounters, tall-tale critters, and more)
Magickal Mystical Creatures (D.J. Conway, Nonfiction - Fabulous beasts as spirit guides)
A Natural History of the Unnatural World ("The Cryptozoological Society of London", Fiction - Fabulous and cryptozoological creatures)
The Flight of Dragons (Peter Dickinson, Fiction - A speculative look at how a biologically-probably dragon might live)
The Book of Fabulous Beasts (Joseph Nigg, Nonfiction - Mythological animal lore)
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