Cryptid Sea Monsters: A Field Guide by Kelly Milner Halls, Illus. by Rick Spears

 

Reviewed by Jeanne

Most people are familiar with Nessie, the famed creature said to haunt Scotland’s Loch Ness, but how about Bessie?  That’s the name given to an alleged lake monster in Lake Erie.  People claim to have seen it frolicking in reports dating back to the late 1700s, though descriptions vary.  Is does it have arms?  Fins? Red eyes? Is it black, copper, spotted, or silver? Yes.   The name came after a contest was held in the 1980s to name the monster, and the winning name (inspired by a nearby nuclear plant) was South Bay Besse, which was quickly transformed into Bessie.

Names ending is “sie” seem to be almost par for the course for lake monsters.  There’s Chessie the Chesapeake Bay creature, Cressie of Newfoundland, and Issie, a Japanese lake monster who, according to legend, was once a beautiful white horse who became a sea monster after her foal was stolen. 

All these creatures and many more can be discovered in the pages of Cryptid Sea Monsters, a delightfully illustrated book with brief entries on many. . . uh, animals? The book employs a rating system of one to four starts, with one star meaning probably not real and four stars meaning “proven real.”

Good news, they rate the Loch Ness Monster as real.

It also gives you a pretty good idea of how seriously to regard this book.

Most of the ratings have the creatures at three or four stars, with Merfolk getting a rare one star rating.

While the book is good fun, and the authors admit people may disagree with their ratings, I admit I didn’t care for the fact that they included at least one genuinely real creature in the book:  the Oarfish, which is a very rare creature usually seen only when they are sick, dying, or dead.  It’s a long eel-like fish which may have given rise in part to legends of sea serpents. It’s not a cryptid, a creature for which there is no physical proof of existence.  At least they gave it four stars.

So if mysterious and possibly imaginary animals are your thing, by all means pick up a copy of Cryptid Sea Monsters.