Giants, Monsters, and Dragons: An Encyclopedia of Folklore, Legend, and Myth

Media:	Paperback
Author:	Carol Rose
Publisher:	W. W. Norton & Company
Release date:	November, 2001
List price:	~~$18.95~~
Our price:	$12.89 that is 32% off!

Giants, Monsters, and Dragons: An Encyclopedia of Folklore, Legend, and Myth

Average rating: Stars

Happy happy joy joy!

I am madly in love with this book. I have been looking for a book like this since I was old enough to read. I've read several dozen monster encyclopedias. This book is very similar to "The Encyclopedia of Things That Never Were," except that everything that Never Were did wrong, THIS book did right! You can actually find what you're looking for in this book!

This book does NOT make things up as it goes along. It does not mix the author's opinions with ancient opinions; its voice is neutral, but not dry. It does not contain illustrations which are irrelevant to the text. It is not messy in its layout- everything is perfectly organized. The bibliography is truly perfect, and is referred to constantly.

This book does indeed cover giants, monsters, and dragons; and it also covers a lot of gods, spirits, undead, goblins, fictional famous people, and so on. It covers ALL the mythologies of the world, concentrating on them equally. Most books like this will, say, tell you all about European mythics at great length, but only touch briefly on Thunderbird or Rainbow Snake, often the sole representatives of the entire continent they come from, and all their fascinating brothers are neglected completely. This book doesn't mix in movie monsters with the ancient ones (as some books do) although there are some fairly recent entities listed, such as Paul Bunyan. Rather than using modern illustrations drawn by an illustrator who is clueless about how the monster is supposed to look aside from the text description, and so produces something totally useless for reference, this book uses old illustrations, woodcuts and steel engravings- my only complaint may be that those illustrations are few and far between, and all grayscale, but it has a perfect bibliography, so you always know where to look for more- this book is designed to start you off, tell you where to go for more if you want to. Every single entry tells you which books it came from. It's full of some really seriously obscure creatures, too, so that's good.

As I was reading an entry about a creature which was born in the mythologies of an area near where I live, I thought to myself: "The only way this book could be any better was that if there was an index in the back that listed all the mythics by location! But of course there won't be, nothing is that perfect."

And lo and behold, I looked in the back, and it was THERE. As a counterpoint to the fully indexed alphabetical listing of all the monsters, the appendixes in the back list all the monsters by category, so you may look them up that way. There are category listings such as Thailand, or United States Native. And then there are category listings for type of monster, such as "beings that are horses or part horse," or "dragons- occidental." And so on. You can seriously find whatever you're looking for in this book, and there's plenty of it.

Giants, Monsters, and Dragons: An Encyclopedia of Folklore, Legend, and Myth - Carol Rose

Mistical...:-D

This book has all merfolk, Paul Baunyan, and dragons. It even has jabberwocky.

-Dom :-D

Carol Rose - Giants, Monsters, and Dragons: An Encyclopedia of Folklore, Legend, and Myth

A good reference, but unforgivably overpriced

I'm not sure if this is Carol Rose's fault or her publisher's, but this book cost me eighteen dollars brand new with the older cover. This was only a few months ago. While this is an excellent reference book, one of the best I have seen, the price is a bit steep for casual readers.

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