Monstrous: The Lore, Gore, and Science Behind Your Favorite Monsters

Beccia explores the historical, scientific, and psychological origins of eight notorious monster characters, including Frankenstein's monster, Dracula, zombies, Bigfoot, and others. Beccia illustrates in a ghoulish cartoon style, while infographics explore the monsters' anatomical features and primary characteristics. Additional sections offer "How to" tips on surviving creature attacks ("If you spot a baby Bigfoot, you might be tempted to play with it, especially if it is cute and furry. Don't"). Beccia explores the circumstances that contributed to the lore behind each being while bringing a scientific dimension to the playful concept. Alongside the text's logical explanations (Could the Kraken really be a giant squid?), there is fun to be had, and readers will savor details about how history, superstition, and human perception have inspired some of the most feared and beloved monster legends. Ages 9-14. (Sept.)

Gr 7 Up-Beccia delivers an interwoven tale of science, history, and the fictional monsters we love and fear. The mixed-media illustrations are macabre and quirky when fictionalized, while frighteningly accurate when depicting scientific and historical infographics. Balancing darker backgrounds with colorful contrasting text, each monster biography has a mix of paragraphs, diagrams, and time lines/scales. Each monster (perhaps) becomes a little less scary as readers start to understand the science behind each one. From the electricity that seemingly awoke Frankenstein's monster to the radiation that evidently created Godzilla, the science is systematically broken down. Although some of the information may be disturbing for younger readers, the connections to history and science also make the text fascinating and, at times, laugh-out-loud funny. VERDICT Avid fans of dinosaurs, animals, science, history, scary stories, or, more specifically, R.L. Stine's "Goosebumps" and the "Hotel Transylvania" series will enjoy these monsters' origin stories.-Hilary Tufo, Columbus Metropolitan Library-Reynoldsburg

"Eight renowned monsters of film, fantasy, and folklore offer gateways to scientific fields and enquiries. 'The real magic is science, ' writes Beccia (They Lost Their Heads!, 2018), and to back up the claim, she surrounds introductions to familiar fantastic creatures, from Dracula to Bigfoot, the Kraken, werewolves, and King Kong, with excursions into diverse scientific topics relevant to each. After leading off with a look at the chemical bases of fear and other emotions, for instance, an account of Mary Shelley's creation of Frankenstein's monster serves as entree for discussions of electricity, the experiments of Galvani and others, how defibrillators work, glowing pigs and other products of genetic experimentation, lobotomies, head transplants, and how certain breakfast-cereal dyes turn poop pink. Moreover, later chapters invite readers to sink their teeth into a vampiric timeline from ancient Babylonia and the Twilight saga, weigh King Kong's unlikely mass ratio ('Did Beauty or Math Kill the Beast?'), glimpse a deep-sea 'bone-eating snot-flower worm' chowing down on a dead whale, and assemble an official Centers for Disease Control zombie-preparedness kit that would, uncoincidentally, be just as useful in a pandemic or other natural disaster. The monsters are more comical than scary in the author's painted illustrations, and though her (living) cast defaults to white, she does include some brown-skinned figures. Informative and entertaining throughout for readers undead or otherwise."—starred, Kirkus Reviews