Children’s book from prob 1981-1984. It’s about mythical creatures, including cyclops, sirens, griffin, loch ness, bigfoot, minotaur. The cover was possibly sky blue, and some illustrations were cyclops w/lightning bolt, bigfoot with skulls. Ordered from scholastic fair, can’t remember title/author.
Stump the Bookseller
New format, same book stumper solving.
This sounds half-right: “Mythical Beasts Coloring Book” by Fridolf Johnson (Dover Coloring Books), copyright 1976, has a sky-blue cover featuring a maiden and a unicorn in front of a castle. Inside are striking line drawings of the sirens, minotaur and griffin you mention, along with a centaur, merman, Cerberus, hippogriff, Kraken, Hydra, Medusa, and many more. It does not, however, have Bigfoot, a cyclops or the Loch Ness Monster (though there is a sea serpent). Maybe another coloring book in the series had those creatures??
This might be it: “Mythological Creatures Stained Glass Coloring Book” by Jeff A. Menges. “You’ll journey into a thrilling, mysterious world when you color these artistic renderings of creatures from ancient mythology. Sixteen dramatic stained glass illustrations include a dragon and a sea serpent, a many-headed hydra, the sinister sphinx, a cyclops, a centaur, and other legendary monsters. Pages are perforated for easy removal, so you can hang your finished artwork in a window or near a lamp for an otherworldly glow.”
Thanks for helping. Neither one are it so far. I’m trying to find it for a friend of mine. I’m pretty sure he said it wasn’t a coloring book. But I ran the titles by him anyway and he said they weren’t it. Thanks though.
“The Encyclopedia of Things That Never Were: Creatures, Places, and People” by Robert Ingpen and Michael Page?
The Robert Ingpen one was close but he said the drawings in the one he remembers were more childlike…more like Dr. Seuss quality. This one really has me stumped. Thanks for all the ideas
My google-fu has failed, though I did find a similar entry in the Loganberry archives with a few more details:
M659: Mythological creatures and monsters
Children’s paperback (8″X8″ approx.) book circa mid 80s about mythological creatures & monsters.15-20 pages. Front cover was blue and pictured was a cyclops sitting on a mountain. Each page illustrated a different creature and below it was a description of it (bigfoot, cyclops, siren, minotaur etc)
Could it be one of the D’Aulaires books? E.g. D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths or Norse Myths – lots of monsters and cool drawings in those as I remember from being a kid in the 80s.
Could it be a Piccolo Explorer Scolastic called Mysteries: Fabulous Beasts? I bought it from school when I was about 7 so about 1981. ISBN number 0 330 26055 3 Hope this helps!
This sounds a lot like a book I’m trying to remember as well. I had two books. This one and another one from the same people that had only real animals in it (I remember that one had an electric eel entry and described horses as having one toe). I think that one was green. They were both about the size of a Berenstain Bear book. Each page had two creatures on it, and a 1 paragraph description of each creature.
Illustrated Stories from the Greek Myth by Usborne
Did you ever find it? I’m looking for similar (same?) books. Both were hard cover. One had stories of mythical creatures like a griffin, unicorn, etc. They were fables. The other was more grim. It had some scary stories with one being of a woman who lives in a cave and skins children who come too close to her home. Anyone know about which books I’m talking about? Circa 80s as well I believe. Thanks for any help! Lost these books long time ago.
I too am looking for it. I remember some pages were sepia-toned and others were green. They had very disturbing artwork at times. It was shaped like a magazine and had old world tales and sci-fi monsters like Triffids and the Horta.
I may be looking for it as well. I remember a largish paperback book, with illustrations in sepia and tones of blue. They were almost like etchings. It was like a visual encyclopedia of mythological creatures both historical and modern. Everything from greek/irish/norse myths to early horror literature like Frankenstein to more modern monsters like Nessie.
Some entries took up an entire page (Frankenstein, Dracula, alien) while other lesser known monsters were grouped by cultural origin(like one page was all irish/scottish monsters like the Kelsie and loch ness)
There was a particularly scary picture for the ‘generic alien’ entry that was a head shot of a creature with a sort of upside-down human face.
Figured out the one I was looking for. The Creature Catalog by Michael Berenstain
Try “the world of unknown monsters”
Is it “Creepy Creatures?” Just went down the Internet rabbit hole and found the one I was searching for: https://archive.org/details/creepycreatures00nevi/page/n1/mode/1up