Erni Cabat's Magical World of Monsters

Elaborate illustrations of extraordinary beasts accompany an informative text in a book that plays directly to children's fascination with monsters. Cohen provides a bare-bones history of each creature--basilisk, griffin, hydra, among others--then expands with anecdotes or a point designed to encourage further thought. His prose is intelligent, enthusiastic and never condescending as he presents a fetching world of creatures of the imagination--or otherwise. (Cohen deftly incorporates his subjects' strong roots in classic mythology.) Cabat offers his own homage to these fantastic monsters, painting each like a decorative jewel against a vibrant, solid-color background. However, he does not do justice to the fact that people truly believed in these terrors; he evokes splendid but artificial creations that lack drama and a sense of menace. His work here fails to capture the majesty of Eric Carle's collages in Dragons, Dragons . Ages 9-up. (May)