I was born in 1978 and remember a picture book full of bizarre creatures whose anatomy blended real-world objects, e.g. a monster with a “bird feeder mouth” into which rain was falling and on which birds were perched, and a forlorn-looking monster with a faucet for a nose or mouth, sitting on a rock. I think water was a theme in all the illustrations, and my brother seems to remember that the book was about “fantasy creatures that missed Noah’s Ark”. (I’ve ruled out “The Lost Zoo” by Cullen.) I recall the art style being painterly and/or airbrushed, with colorful graded shading that gave the creatures great depth. The facial features were detailed, not unlike what you see in a Google Images search for “antique sea monsters”.
Stump the Bookseller
New format, same book stumper solving.
This strange little book is called: Roll Call, the Story of Noah’s Ark & The World’s First Losers Author John Goldthwaite, illustrator Henri Galeron. It was also published under the title: How the Zoznt wasn’t; The Story of the Creatures that Noah Forgot.
That’s the one! It just arrived and brought back a lot of memories. Thank you!
(This is a surprisingly un-Googleable book!)