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A review by venus_reads_
A Natural History of Magical Beasts by Emily Hawkins
adventurous
informative
inspiring
mysterious
fast-paced
5.0
This really was such an immense joy to read!
The backstories and ethology provided for the creatures gives an obvious insight on the amount of effort put into creating this. The writing clearly is very thought-out and super creative as are the illustrations. The art was incredibly gorgeous and elevated the magical feel in this book. I could see this being a wonderful gift even from that alone.
The little letters throughout were such a nice touch that brought the reading experience alive even moreso.
I absolutely loved learning little real-life facts throughout this. (e.g. chitin = metallic substance that gives jewel beetles their shine)
Some favourite pages/creatures featured:
• Tree-Beings (very beautiful full double spread)
• Tommyknocker and Pukwudgie
• Mishepishu (this intrigued me so much, I instantly went down a rabbit hole of information online!! super interesting!)
This was super creative and fun, I know for a *fact* I would've been utterly obsessed with this as a kid and am still completely entralled by it today. Though kids would presumably get more out of this than adults since that's the target audience of course, I can confidently say even interested adults can for sure appreciate this as well.
Thank you to Quarto Publishing Group – Frances Lincoln Children's Books and NetGalley for providing an eARC. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
The backstories and ethology provided for the creatures gives an obvious insight on the amount of effort put into creating this. The writing clearly is very thought-out and super creative as are the illustrations. The art was incredibly gorgeous and elevated the magical feel in this book. I could see this being a wonderful gift even from that alone.
The little letters throughout were such a nice touch that brought the reading experience alive even moreso.
I absolutely loved learning little real-life facts throughout this. (e.g. chitin = metallic substance that gives jewel beetles their shine)
Some favourite pages/creatures featured:
• Tree-Beings (very beautiful full double spread)
• Tommyknocker and Pukwudgie
• Mishepishu (this intrigued me so much, I instantly went down a rabbit hole of information online!! super interesting!)
This was super creative and fun, I know for a *fact* I would've been utterly obsessed with this as a kid and am still completely entralled by it today. Though kids would presumably get more out of this than adults since that's the target audience of course, I can confidently say even interested adults can for sure appreciate this as well.
Thank you to Quarto Publishing Group – Frances Lincoln Children's Books and NetGalley for providing an eARC. All thoughts and opinions are my own.