I’ve never really thought that Bigfoot, or Sasquatch as it’s
sometimes called, is anything more than a myth fueled by a series of clever (or
not-so-clever) hoaxes. And so I was more than a little skeptical when I began
reading Kelly Milner Halls’ latest book, In
Search of Sasquatch (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011). I knew Halls to be a terrifically talented and prolific writer of
nonfiction books for young people (Saving
the Baghdad Zoo, Mysteries of the Mummy Kids, and Tales of the Cryptids are some of her better-known books)—but
Sasquatch? Really?
Leave it to Halls to make you think just a little
differently about your worldview. After reading In Search of Sasquatch, I can’t say that I’m packing to go on a
Sasquatch search expedition, but I’m willing to entertain the notion that it
may very well exist.
The many people Halls has interviewed for the book include
an anthropologist, a linguistic expert, a biologist, and several people who
claim to have sighted Sasquatch. While acknowledging that Sasquatch hoaxes
abound, she bolsters her argument for the possible existence the mysterious
creature by example: for centuries, paleontologists believed that the coelacanth
was a long-extinct prehistoric fish—until a living coelacanth was discovered in
1938. Similarly, the giant squid was a thing of Greek legend—until it was
discovered in 2004.
Her text is accompanied by gorgeous illustrations,
additional resources, a glossary, and an extensive bibliography and source
notes. Kids who are drawn to the weird and wonderful will love this book. So
will adults.
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