Excellent reference book on all sorts of "things that never where", with nice illustrations. ( )

I'll be up-front about it. I am a fan of Robert Ingpen's illustration work. And I bought this book for a bargain price at a second hand book sale...otherwise it might have been too expensive to tempt me. But it is a treasure. I found myself quite captivated by the script written by Michael Page. He has written a number of books in conjunction with Robert Ingpen. They certainly have a lively imagination between the two of them. My admiration for Robert Ingpen's work actually goes back to the days when I worked as an agricultural scientist and Ingpen was an illustrator for a journal published by Australia's CSIRO (a scientific research organisation). I didn't know who was behind the marvellous illustrations in the journal. And it was only, very much later that I discovered it was the same Ingpen who's work I admired in such wonderful books as Treasure Island and Tom Sawyer. Interestingly enough, I note that Ingpen carried over some of his learning from his scientific illustrator days. His Hairy Peruvian gnomes who travelled the sea in a poppy kettle have actually taken their name from a variety of subterranean clover called "Hairy Peruvian".
Normally, I am rather put-off by books which slavishly follow an encyclopaedia format laid out in alphabetical order. This book does follow this format to some extent but in a rather relaxed manner....as though Page and Ingpen between them ...more or less just followed what they, personally found interesting. And, in Ingpen's case, I guess, where he could draw on his earlier artwork. I would really liked to have had some more information about Ingpen's art technique. Does he work in watercolour? or ink and watercolour? Does he use gouache a lot? Is he working in oils? It's hard to tell. What scale does he work at and are all his painting reduced in size for printing? So many questions and no answers. They do, however.....in a tiny note at the end of the book....acknowledge that they are following in the great tradition fo Arthur Rackham and Howard Pyle. In other words the illustration style is distinctively realist ...but with somewhat fuzzy edges. (I did read somewhere that Ingpen kept a worn out brush which he used for textures and hair and such like). Must say that I love his textured backgrounds and his careful research. The guy has been so prolific over his career. I wonder how many thousands of illustrations he must have produced over the years?
this version of the book is a large hardback ...and if you haven't already realised, it is wonderfully illustrated throughout. Worth having just for the illustrations ....I don't know how many there are in the book.....but just did a quick count of two samples of ten pages and came up with an average of 1.5 Illustrations per page. Of course some are full-page and others quite small. But, apart from the illustrations the text is quite entertaining. I assume the target market was children though I just enjoyed reading about such thing as the "vail" which is the coin which one must pay the ferry man Charon for passage across the river Acheron en route to the underworld. The knowledge roams across Australian Aboriginal legends, Nordic, African...in fact...anything which seems to have taken the fancy of the two authors. Strongly recommend it. ( )

“The Encyclopaedia of things that never were” dishes up a wide selection of gods, monsters, heroes and places, tackling many of the things we have believed in over the years. I was pleased to see the inclusion of various Australian Aboriginal legends but overall there seemed to be few entries from outside the Europe/North America belief systems. Maybe we can hope for a follow-up volume, with the same sort of lush illustrations that decorate this volume. ( )

too New Agey - Gave up after the first few pages.

I've had this book since high school and it's one of my favorites. It's not very comprehensive or detailed in many ways, but the combination of the text and images just fuels the imagination and makes you want to learn more.

This was one of the first books that really opened my eyes to the myths and depth of stories in other cultures. ( )