Believe

This beautiful picture book is a new direction by Catherine Doyle, who is already an established and award- winning author of junior fiction and YA novels, but it is likely to be classed in libraries as a picture book for older readers, as the poems and information on each lavish double-page spread are quite long.

An introductory poem imagines a time when magic called to every child, until doubting adults forgot to believe, and made the magical creatures decide to leave. Our guide is Sage Brightwing, a fairy, and she knows the places where magic still hides, as long as we believe that these wonders are real.   Twelve kinds of mythical creatures are depicted here, including dragons, fairies, trolls, merfolk and goblins. Unicorns are included, of course, in the Magical Horse section… There are creatures from Irish folk tales, of course, as Catherine Doyle has written a number of magical books set in her native Ireland, but also from Scandinavian, Hawaiian and Australian stories. Mythical beings from classical literature are here: Pegasus the flying horse, the enormous squid Charybdis from the Odyssey, but also more familiar creatures like the Tooth Fairy and the Loch Ness Monster.  The Yokai, spirits of Japan, get a whole section to themselves – this is a very thorough examination of all sorts of magical and mythical creatures, and all are beautifully illustrated by Freya Hartas, in such a way that none of them look too scary.

This is indeed a very beautiful book, and one that many children will pore over with wonder.