Cryptid Creatures: A Field Guide to 50 Fascinating Beasts Paperback – Illustrated, September 24, 2019

Formatted like a field guide, "Cryptid Creatures" presents its subject as if your next hike into the woods might bring you face to face with some towering anthropoid or extinction-defying pterosaur in need of positive identification. Halls' brisk, uncynical prose fills the pages with information about location, year first sighted, eye-witness accounts, creature behavior, and a believability star rating ranging from confirmed hoax (eg., Piltdown Man) to confirmed reality (eg., Hogzilla). While aimed at kids -- and what kid isn't fascinated by these critters at some point? -- the text is not in any way condescending or dumbed-down; this guide is for anyone who is interested in these mysterious creatures which tell us as much about ourselves as they do about the world outside ourselves.The field guide conceit offers illustrator Spears with the opportunity to flex his mad imagination-meets-natural history skills to render what these creatures might look like not only as intimidating adults, but also as cute babies, or what the skull of a half-human/half-fish (or -wolf or -ape, etc.) might look like were you to trip over one lying on the forest floor. You can tell Spears had a field day bringing these beasts to life with a style that mixes a sketch-artist confidence with well-observed detail and a knowledge of anatomical morphology.My only niggles are that a couple of the illustrations fall across the gutter, making them hard to see, and the light yellow-orange text in places is a little hard for readers like me to see well in low light. Also, I did see a Trumpish misspelling of the country Namibia (Nambia) in one spot, in an otherwise well-edited and proofread text.All in all, a fun resource for all ages.

I like this book because it is easy to understand the facts being presented. My son loves this book and looks forward to each time we read it.

My granddaughter was checking this book out of the local library every chance she got, so I had a copy sent to her so that she would always be able to have her favorite book. The thing she loves most about it is that it shows the “baby” version of all the cryptids.

Purchased for my 11 yr old nephew and he loved it. Will be useful when we are out hiking/hunting cryptids.

This collection of cryptids is fun for all ages. Whetehr the author is describing a potentially real animal or a totally silly one (beware the dropbears!), she writes engagingly, and the wonderful illustrations of baby cryptids are a treat.

My son (8) loved it!

I bought this for my 8 year old son who loves mythology and mysterious creature stories. He loves it and so does my 5 year old daughter. I was cautious at first thinking maybe it would be scary for them but it's not. A nice touch that we all like about this book is that along with every cryptid drawing, there is also a drawing of the baby or juvenile of the same kind. Some of those pictures are really cute and my kids love them.

Excellent book for anyone’s collection