Imaginary Menagerie

Imaginary Menagerie

Author: Julie Larios

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published: 2008-04-01

Total Pages: 43

ISBN-13: 0547540663

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Who is half gallop, half walk? Who can turn you to stone with one look? Whose voice do you hear in the splash on the shore? Centaurs, mermaids, and other curious creatures populate these wondrous poems and paintings, inspired by a mythological world full of imagination and mystery. Includes end notes about cultures and legends.


Bestiary

Bestiary

Author: Ilene Winn-Lederer

Publisher:

Published: 2016-09-26

Total Pages: 42

ISBN-13: 9780692786574

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A visual bestiary (collected illustrations of real and imaginary animals) organized within the framework of an A-Z alliterative alphabet with a preface and artist's notes.


Imaginary Animals

Imaginary Animals

Author: Boria Sax

Publisher: Reaktion Books

Published: 2013-11-15

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 1780232136

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An extraordinary menagerie of fantastical and unreal beasts featuring hundreds of illustrations, from griffins to dog-men, mermaids, dragons, unicorns, and yetis. Fire-breathing dragons, beautiful mermaids, majestic unicorns, terrifying three-headed dogs—these fantastic creatures have long excited our imagination. Medieval authors placed them in the borders of manuscripts as markers of the boundaries of our understanding. Tales from around the world place these beasts in deserts, deep woods, remote islands, ocean depths, and alternate universes—just out of our reach. And in the sections on the apocalypse in the Bible, they proliferate as the end of time approaches, with horses with heads like lions, dragons, and serpents signaling the destruction of the world. Legends tell us that imaginary animals belong to a primordial time, before everything in the world had names, categories, and conceptual frameworks. In this book, Boria Sax digs into the stories of these fabulous beasts. He shows how, despite their liminal role, imaginary animals like griffins, dog-men, yetis, and more are socially constructed creatures, created through the same complex play of sensuality and imagination as real ones. Tracing the history of imaginary animals from Paleolithic art to their roles in stories such as Harry Potter and even the advent of robotic pets, he reveals that these extraordinary figures help us psychologically—as monsters, they give form to our amorphous fears, while as creatures of wonder, they embody our hopes. Their greatest service, Sax concludes, is to continually challenge our imaginations, directing us beyond the limitations of conventional beliefs and expectations. Featuring over 230 illustrations of a veritable menagerie of fantastical and unreal beasts, Imaginary Animals is a feast for the eyes and the imagination.


The Book of Barely Imagined Beings

The Book of Barely Imagined Beings

Author: Caspar Henderson

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2013-04-10

Total Pages: 448

ISBN-13: 022604470X

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From medieval bestiaries to Borges’s Book of Imaginary Beings, we’ve long been enchanted by extraordinary animals, be they terrifying three-headed dogs or asps impervious to a snake charmer’s song. But bestiaries are more than just zany zoology—they are artful attempts to convey broader beliefs about human beings and the natural order. Today, we no longer fear sea monsters or banshees. But from the infamous honey badger to the giant squid, animals continue to captivate us with the things they can do and the things they cannot, what we know about them and what we don’t. With The Book of Barely Imagined Beings, Caspar Henderson offers readers a fascinating, beautifully produced modern-day menagerie. But whereas medieval bestiaries were often based on folklore and myth, the creatures that abound in Henderson’s book—from the axolotl to the zebrafish—are, with one exception, very much with us, albeit sometimes in depleted numbers. The Book of Barely Imagined Beings transports readers to a world of real creatures that seem as if they should be made up—that are somehow more astonishing than anything we might have imagined. The yeti crab, for example, uses its furry claws to farm the bacteria on which it feeds. The waterbear, meanwhile, is among nature’s “extreme survivors,” able to withstand a week unprotected in outer space. These and other strange and surprising species invite readers to reflect on what we value—or fail to value—and what we might change. A powerful combination of wit, cutting-edge natural history, and philosophical meditation, The Book of Barely Imagined Beings is an infectious and inspiring celebration of the sheer ingenuity and variety of life in a time of crisis and change.


The Medieval Menagerie

The Medieval Menagerie

Author: Janetta Rebold Benton

Publisher:

Published: 1992

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13:

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"Featuring incredible creatures and grotesque gargoyles, "The Medieval Menagerie" takes us from the improbable to the impossible as it traces the depiction and the meaning of real and imaginary animals in medieval art. From unicorns and dragons to elephants, lions, and monkeys, medieval society was fascinated with animals, whether they actually existed or not. The more fantastic the creature, the greater its hold seems to have been on the fertile imaginations of the Middle Ages. Both art and literature abound with vividly concocted examples of Gothic monsters (gargoyles and griffins), bizarre ideas about real if exotic beasts (lions were believed to be born dead and resurrected by the father lion three days later), and strange visions of composite creatures (such as a widely accepted animal believed to be a cross between an ant and a lion). Featuring the celebrated collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, "The Medieval Menagerie" is illustrated with the splendid and amusing beasts found in medieval painting, sculpture, architecture and decorative arts, as wello as in bestiaries and manuscripts. The text explores the depiction and the meaning of real and imaginary animals in medieval art. Elegant, lively and intelligent, "The Medieval Managerie" captures some of the wildest creatures ever to grace a Gothic cathedral."--Amazon.ca product desc.


I Saw a Bullfrog

I Saw a Bullfrog

Author: Ellen Stern

Publisher: Random House Books for Young Readers

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780375821738

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Everyone knows what a bullfrog looks like . . . and a catfish. Don’t they? What if these creatures looked just like their names–half one animal and half another? Here’s an imaginary menagerie–from the cowbird to the zebra fish–richly illustrated in full color and with stunning detail. Each animal is introduced by a poem that speculates about what such a curiously named creature might be like. Also included is a glossary of facts about the real animals that inspired the author to create the imaginary ones.


G is for One Gzonk!

G is for One Gzonk!

Author: Tony DiTerlizzi

Publisher: Pocket Books

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781416926177

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'A twenty-six letter menagerie!'