The Gruesome Guide to World Monsters

The book is like an encyclopedia of mythical monsters. Good drawings and imaginative descriptions. It is fun, but not like a novel.

This book is extremely interesting to me because it talks about the locations of each monster and what each monster does to unsuspecting travelers. Also, this book talks about how to survive each encounter with each monster in great detail. The monsters are rated as (1) Frightening, (2) Dangerous, (3) Very Dangerous, (4) Usually Fatal, and (5) Fatal, with the fatal monsters usually having no survival tips for the travelers. My favorite monsters in this book were the Sigbin, a beagle monster whose intestinal gas is deadly, the Kishi, who has half a handsome face and half a hyena face, the Rolling Head, who ate his whole body and goes after travelers and eat them, the cannibal baby, who sucks up the flesh of unsuspecting travelers, and the Curupira, who sucks out all the organs of hunters who harm the animals in Brazil. This book is great for people who want to know more about the monsters of the world and how to survive them. This book is extremely entertaining for both children and adults. The adults will enjoy the book because of it description of all the monsters and the children will enjoy the book for Henrik Drescher's childish yet detailed drawings of the monsters.

"The Gruesome Guide to World Monsters" is presented as a travel guide that will help you plan how to meet (and how to flee) the various monsters of the world. But you have to understand going in that the advice given here are only proven methods for escaping or overcoming SOME of these monsters, SOME of the time. So forget about a money back guarantee that you will come back from your vacation alive, because with some of these survival tips I am pretty sure they are just making things up to give young readers a false sense of hope. All of the monsters that Judy Sierra writes about and which are illustrated by Henrik Drescher are "real" in the sense that they are a genuine part of the world's folklore and have been around for thousands of years. The book is divided geographically so that you learn about the monsters closest to home in North America before moving on to Central and South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia and the Pacific. For each we are told the location where you can find the monster (e.g., watch out for the Cannibal Baby in the Rocky Mountains). Then there is the five point scale of the Gruesomeness Ratings: (1) Frightening, are monsters that are scary but not life-threatening, of which there is only one example, the Baku of Japan that comes into your bedroom at night and eats your bad dreams; (2) Dangerous, are monsters that smart travelers can avoid or overcome, such as Zombis; (3) Very Dangerous, are those monsters where you chances of surviving a meeting are 50-50 at best, such as Bloody Mary, the evil spectre who lives on the other side of mirrors; (4) Usually Fatal, are monsters to avoid at all costs, such as the Vukodlak of Serbia, a wicked person who lives on after death; and then (5) Fatal, where once the monster sees you it is too late, which includes the Jinn of North and Central Africa that kidnap people and cause diseases. For each monster there is also a brief description, and most importantly the Survival Tip (e.g., the Ovda of Finland will apparently become powerless if you touch its left armpit). The illustrations should be appealing to younger readers because, quite frankly, they often look like something kids would draw. The exception that proves the rule would be the wicked painting of the Aniwye, a giant skunk that inhabits the Great Lakes region, which means that living here on the shore of Lake Superior if I hear the sound of giant teeth crunching the roof above my bed, I need to exit immediately. In her afterword Sierra explains some of the necessary roles that these monsters have played in the lives of people, from making sure children stay away from caves and forests to preserving the balance of nature. "The Gruesome Guide to World Monsters" is a nice little introduction to the monsters that people have been talking about for centuries, and if a young reader wants to find out more about the Kishi of Zimbabwe or the Nakk of Sweden, there is certainly enough here for them to be able to look els

This is a totally weird and wonderful book not just for young folks but also for adults who have a wicked sense of humor. The warnings are funny, and the graphics reminded me of Japanese comic books...I bought it for my husband.