I love folklore, so naturally, I also love cryptids, since they're basically the scary story versions of modern folklore. Which is precisely what I enjoyed about The United States of Cryptids.”—BoingBoing I think the favorite thing I learned about was the Silver Lake Serpent in New York. This is a pretty typical story: People see a creature in their local lake, it’s reptilian, serpentine. There’s a few twists where the witnesses sign affidavits to say they saw something, and then people come in with spear guns to try to catch it. But then, the end of that story is, a few years later, a local hotel burns down, and in the hotel, they find the ruins of a sea serpent—metal wires and bladders and stuff. So it was a hoax. Which again, is pretty typical. This picture book is sweet and heartwarming. It tells the story of two young hikers who go into the woods in search of a Yeti. Yeti is afraid and doesn't want to show himself, so they write letters to him to try to get him to come out of the woods. During the hike, a snowstorm is coming, and the hikers aren't ready. Yeti, on the other hand, proves to be a good friend and comes up with a way to help the hikers while still being hidden. The Cryptid Files series by Jean Flitcroft Here's a book series for young people, but this time it's broken down into deeper dives into one animal at a time. In each book in the Behind the Legend series, we look at a different creature or monster from history through a scientific lens and think about whether or not they could be real based on accounts of sightings and other evidence. Nessie and Bigfoot are two of the subjects of this book series, which also talks about mythical creatures that aren't just cryptids. Fiction Books About Cryptids Dear Yeti by James Kwan

books (picked by 9,000+ authors) The best cryptozoology books (picked by 9,000+ authors)

An extremely random and little-known fact about me is that I am obsessed with Nessie (formally known as the Loch Ness monster, but that feels a bit too technical for my taste). My love began in high school, when my friends and I somehow found ourselves doing a group project in Spanish class on the topic of Nessie — I couldn’t tell you why Nessie was a viable theme for a Spanish project or how we came up with it to begin with, but here we are. We spent a weekend immersed in late-aughts internet search results: indiscernible footage of alleged sightings, various articles of questionable credibility, and random documentary clips that had made their way onto YouTube. Regardless of the quality of the research, though, I was hooked. And while I don’t necessarily spend a whole lot of my time deliberately seeking it out these days, I do still always experience a huge rush of excitement if Nessie, or cryptozoology in general, ever does come up. What was a typical day like working on this book? There’s the travel aspect, but then it’s clear you did a ton of archival research too.Charlotte Bridger Drummond is an independent, adventurous, and freethinking mother of five sons who made a living writing women's adventure stories in the early 1900s. She did this to make money. On one day, a little girl gets lost in the woods, and Charlotte decides to help look for her. She ends up getting lost herself, and she comes face-to-face with a group of Sasquatch. This book is written as Charlotte's diary entries. It talks about what the real differences are between wilderness and civilization. Devolution by Max Brooks

The United States of Cryptids: A Tour of American Myths and The United States of Cryptids: A Tour of American Myths and

Ts'ür'i and Aghay are protectors who use language revitalization to save the Earth from bad settlers and cyborg sasquatches in this fun YA comic book about colonialism. Cole Pauls is an artist from the Tahltan First Nation. He wrote this comic in English and Southern Tutchone to help keep the ancestral language alive. City of the Beasts by Isabel Allende Nain Rouge of Michigan, a fierce red goblin that has been spotted before every major city disaster in DetroitBut the big reason that he’s the most popular cryptid is that we’re narcissists. Bigfoot looks like us. Have you seen Harry and the Hendersons?