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Zusatztext “These are stories to be read late at night to an audience willing to be surprised! startled! and kept up wondering about what might lurk nearby.” – P ublishers Weekly ! starred review "Wildly imaginative and delightfully macabre." — Booklist ! starred review “A folk treasure as well as required reading for hikers! trail bikers! and would-be cryptid hunters.” – Kirkus! starred review "A captivating collection for fans of Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Tales to Tell in the Dark ! this is also ideal for those looking for something fresh! creative! and deliciously creepy. Outstanding faux -lore creature tales that will blow away middle school readers. " – School Library Journal! s tarred review "A darkly comic Poe-like bestiary." --Chris Priestley! author of Uncle Montague’s Tales of Terror Informationen zum Autor Hal Johnson is the author of Immortal Lycanthropes ! The Mad Tryst ! and The Murder of Gonzago . Tom Mead is a pen-and-ink artist who exhibits his work under the name "Mr. Mead." Klappentext For every kid who loves a good scare! here are 20 spooky! macabre! and yet whimsical tales about the most fantastical beasts in folklore. FEARSOME CREATURES OF THE LUMBERWOODS speaks to an earlier time in history! when the woods were indeed dark and deep and filled with mystery. The tone is archly smart and quirky - think Edward Gorey meets Lemony Snicket. And the illustrations have a sinewy! retro field-guide look - some printed with the addition of glow-in-the-dark ink. DEAR READER, The world is filled with frogs and zebras, and you have probably seen them both in zoos and dissected them both in school. But the world is filled with stranger animals, fearsome creatures too terrifying for most zoologists to understand. I have devoted my life to their study. I am a cryptozoologist and, if I do say so myself, at or near the forefront of my field. So many colleagues have been eaten by chimeras, incinerated by salamanders, or pecked to death by barnacle geese; there is not necessarily much competition left. The focus of my study has been the lumberwoods of North America, a land still wild and untamed at the margin, populated only by lumberjacks and their mortal enemies, the cruel trees that once tyrannized this land—and, of course, by fearsome creatures. This book is the fruit of a lifetime of deathdefying feats in the jaws—the literal jaws—of some of the deadliest animals ever to stroll across the earth, but it is by no means complete. There are many undiscovered, or half-discovered, creatures still extant in this great continent. There is the hidebehind, for example, whose most distinguishing feature is that whenever you look at it, it is hiding behind something. Pecos Bill caught one and donated it to the Cincinnati Zoo; but even then, when researchers tried to study it, the creature was always concealed behind the bars of its cage. There’s not much to say about such a beast; not much is known, so I also left the hidebehind out. I left out the slink and the ring-tailed tooter. There are enough fearsome creatures in this continent to fill sixty or eventy books such as this one. I sometimes marvel that anyone makes it to the grocery store and back alive. THE HODAG While he lived, Paul Bunyan served as the master of the Michigan lumberwoods; since his death, its only master has been the hodag. Three thousand pounds of pure carnivorous appetite, the hodag most resembles a bull-horned rhinoceros with a spiny back. There are larger creatures in North America, and there are faster creatures in North Americ...
