I found a slightly dog-eared copy of Aaron Lopresti's Fantastical Creatures Field Guide: How to Hunt Them Down & Draw Them Where They Live in a box in my basement, a box otherwise filled with various books, scattered photographs, a couple of magazines and an assortment of sheet music. Having collected review materials for this website for more than a quarter-century -- and having moved at least twice in the meantime -- I often find unreviewed materials in odd places. When I have the time -- and sufficient interest -- I try to make up for lost time and give proper attention to the work.

Aaron Lopresti is, according to the preface, a professional illustrator, comic-book writer and artist. For the purposes of this book, he has created the character of Professor Ham Fabricatini, a "world famous researcher of strange, fantastic creatures and abnormal phenomena." Using Fabricatini's journals, research notes and a collection of "blurry photographs and crude drawings," Lopresti created this field guide to illustrate the obscure creatures of the world.

The book begins with the metropolitan pterosaur, a prehistoric flying reptile said to frequent New York's Central Park. From there, Lopresti takes his readers on a cryptic journey through the world, from North and South America to Europe, Africa, Asia, Oceania and even Antarctica. Each continent has pages devoted to five or ten strange creatures that Fabricatini purportedly encountered on his travels. Among them, the fishing dragons, the bayou boogeyman, little bigfoot, saber-toothed jackrabbits, sloth toads, ice dragons, stealthosaurs, dragosaurs, pastry elves, drooling wolfhounds, bug-eyed bush beards, mummy fish, sea golems, fire faeries, Australian mud slingers, raging rock mites, shark seals and stone sliders.

I'll admit, when I first opened the book, I was hopeful it would be a whimsical and artistic exploration of actual mythical creatures from around the world. Full credit to the author, though, for creating a whole lot of new ones!

Each creature gets a page of narrative, often as much about Fabricatini and the folks he encounters along the way as it is about the cryptid under consideration. Each two-page spread also includes a colorful illustration and a few sketches related to the beast in question. A few two-page illustrations are scattered throughout.

The book concludes with a bonus narrative describing Lopresti's process for devising and drawing his creations for the book, and he walks readers through the process using sketches of his Appalachian woodsman. Given the book's subtitle, I kind of expected there to be more pages devoted to the process of illustration, which I was looking forward to sharing with my artistic daughter. That lack, more than anything, was disappointing.

Even so, Fantastical Creatures Field Guide is a fun, pleasantly illustrated book for folks who enjoy the weird (and weirdly illustrated) beings who might, just maybe, inhabit our world.