A Field Guide to Griffins, Unicorns, and Other Mythical Beasts

by Aaron Sautter

What should you do if you meet a unicorn or a phoenix? Where would you look if you want to see a griffin or a hippogriff? How do you defend yourself if a minotaur or harpy attacks you? These mythical beasts may not be real, but what if they were? This handy field guide gives you everything you need to understand these fantastic creatures of the imagination.

Genres: Fantasy, Mythical Creatures

32 pages, Library Binding

First published July 1, 2014

Reviews

[Cameron Ramsden · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book interesting and would recommend it

[Vivian · Rating 3 out of 5]

This slim introduction treats these creatures of myth as if they are real and living today. Each one's dimensions, habitat, diet, life cycle, physical features, and behavior are touted. There is a full-page illustration and a few bolded vocabulary words, such as "lair" and "talon". I found the presentation to be hilarious, but I'm sure kids will take it very seriously at face value.

[Tim Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aimed at ages 8-14, this was a fun little book that I am glad I got a look at. I would have loved it growing up and probably would have read it several times. It took me less than an hour to read, maybe more, though much of that was also admiring the artwork.

The author provided field guide like entries for a series of mythical creatures (no undead or faerie here), namely griffins, harpies, phoenixes, pegasi, unicorns, minotaurs, chimeras, gorgons, Cerberus, sea serpents, and kraken. Each entry got two pages, with most of the right page a single illustration, the left page text, with the top of the left page a sentence or so on size, habitat, and diet and below that a paragraph each for life cycle, physical features, and behavior. Various terms like talon and foal were defied in bold on the bottom right page and again at the back of the book in a one page glossary (after which is a list of three books for further reading).

The artwork varied in style, with some paintings and others looking more computer generated or photo manipulated (I wasn’t quite as fond of the latter as the former). My favorites were the griffin (which looked more or less all of one color, I rather liked that, the harpy, which adhered to what I know of Classical Greek ideas of the creature, essentially a great bird with the head of a horrible human woman, the chimeras entry, which somehow made the goat part the scariest portion of the creature, and the sea serpent, which had nice details down to flocks of birds circling overhead and a threatening cloudscape). I thought the pegasus and the unicorn illustrations the weakest ones; not bad, but not as clearly fantastic as the other entries.

The author adhered pretty close to the classic version of the creatures, though seemed to try to walk the line on the phoenix (between it being a creature of constant flames, as often depicted in modern fantasy art, and a creature that burned itself to death so that it could regenerate), was quite creative on the sea serpent (as they have in this book “large fins that resemble a dragon’s wings”), and underplayed a bit the Underworld connection of Cerberus. Some things like the idea that phoenixes ally with wizards seems made up for the book (and that’s perfectly fine). Several times the inclusion of creatures in popular movies are mentioned (twice for Harry Potter and once for Pirates of the Caribbean, though at least one more entry could have merited a Harry Potter mention).

I of course would have liked to have seen more creatures – the manticore, the centaur, the siren, the mermaid, the hydra – but some of these are probably detailed in the other books in the series.

[J · Rating 1 out of 5]

Just skimming the book I fell in love with it and really wanted this to be one of my new favorite type of book since the artwork for the most part is amazing. Unfortunately although it comes with a pretty package it is a very rotten core underneath for a book that makes me so mad when reading it.

The book itself is a very thin book for one of its topic but then again the author chose to make a series out of the mythic creatures and beings thus splitting the subject into at least four books. Although the books are geared toward children I would much rather have had the books combined together since half of the pages are dedicated to artwork and thus it would allow the reader to have a bigger book to enjoy.

Furthermore the book is set-up to read like a guide with the species name placed at the top. This is then followed underneath or to the left side with a size box, a diet box and also a habitat box. The following information is then broken down into three sections with one part dedicated to Behavior, another to Physical Features and one to Life Cycle. And some entries had an extra Fact box.

Now there is where I am going to tear this book to pieces since of how horrible a job it did. First of all I want to point out the fact that there is a map in the back of the book that places down where these creatures came from. Unfortunately that is the only time it seems that the author's head is on his shoulders since even though Chimera and Cerberus come from Greece he left out their origin stories. Chimera was made out to be a monster created from evil wizards and Cerberus to not have been birthed at all but is instead an evil spirit with a hellhound profile. Both were monsters birthed in Greece to the monster-being Echidna.

Another thing that was a lot of an irritant for me was all the silly and/or wrong aspects of these profiles such as why do most of the creatures have to be 8 feet tall? Why are Gorgons considered evil and Harpies mistaken for Sirens? And why would Pegasi with such giant wings prefer to live in forests where flight and behemoth wings be a hindrance? Or even why is Cerberus mentioned as not being an eater and yet he still hunts for victims?

And then my largest tic.... What is wrong with Aaron Sautter that he has a giant chip on his shoulders when it comes to family. Apparently every single one of these monster species are told that they raise their young alone even when the basic stock animal such as horses are very social herd animals. When paired to the fact that Cerberus and Chimera were both stripped of their parents it makes for a bit of a dark book in my opinion.

Fortunately not all creatures were so spitefully maligned in their portrayal but then again they had horrible illustrations out of a book of really good artwork like the poor sea serpent. Or even in the case of the Kraken it was one of the better entries illustration and species' profile-wise, which just meant the author chose to repeat his text then throw in a pop culture to Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean (that makes a second pop culture nod after Harry Potter of course).

As a result of all the so-called glaring issues I am closing the cover on this book and just letting it slide back into the stack of could-have-been-good-but-is-actually-not-worth-my-time.

[RumBelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book clearly states that all of these creatures are imaginary, they only existed in myth's legends and tales. However, on the flip side, it also very well constructs a field guide as if to say, this is where you could find each of these creatures, and these are their natural habitats, diets, characteristic and features. It is quite imaginative and creative. In addition, some of the creatures, like Gorgons and Unicorns, if they feature prominently in a certain myth, or book, such as Medusa or the unicorns in Harry Potter, the author takes note of that.

Each creature had a two page spread, one devoted to text, the other to a full page illustration. A couple of my favorite creatures discussed where the Phoenix, Sea Serpent and Kraken. I liked how their habitats, lifestyles and behaviors were described. Another interesting entry was Cerberus. The author describes him as an evil spirit who takes the form of a three headed dog. I had never heard of Cerberus being described as a spirit, only as a dog, so I found that very interesting.

The illustrations were so well done. Vibrant colors, great details on each of the creatures and the backgrounds.

At the end of the book was a quiz to see how well you read the material, a glossary, index and additional resources. A very interesting book for any fan of myths, legends or bestiaries.

[Jbondandrews · Rating 2 out of 5]

An okay little book.

[Shelz · Rating 5 out of 5]

An awesome little read!