Fabulous Creatures: Legendary Animals from Around the World

Funke (the Inkheart series) presents 19 fantastical creatures from around the world in a handsome package that highlights both common and lesser-known entities. Each spread introduces a single being via a handful of anecdotal-feeling first-person paragraphs (“Should a genie ever grant me a wish, I would wish for a dragon friend”), while full-bleed images from debut illustrator Warnecke fill the remaining space with spare colorblock images. An entry about the unicorn portrays a white, horselike figure dipping its horn into a pool amid blooming flora, while text challenges readers’ mental image of the animal: “Some have the legs of an elephant. In India, they are red and black and very aggressive. And in Russia their horn is split at the tip like a fork.” Other highlighted beings include the scaled, antlered skywalking Qilin of China, Finland’s forest-protecting bear Otso, and Indigenous North Americans’ rain-bestowing thunderbird. An endnote cites that the author sought to limn the beings “without making them bringers of nightmares,” and gentle prose and graphical art succeed in rendering the entries as both approachable and intriguing for cryptozoologists of all ages. Ages 4–8. (Mar.)