Don't judge too quickly based on its title, art direction or whimsical premise as modern alphabetical bestiary: Caspar Henderson's book of taxonomically-real animals does some seriously interesting things. Henderson approaches each creature's entry from a 'human perspective', by which I mean that at times he begins through the anecdotal first person, and at others through myth, history, literature, or philosophy. The tone will be meditative, almost dreamlike in cadence; margin notes add flecks of detail; but the magic and historicity with which Henderson regards each creature in no way detracts from the depth or accuracy of the scientific account. The Book of Barely Imagined Beings toys with something that will soon be very important, as the ways we currently relate to Nature prove to wreak irreversible damage: the ability to regard the living world around us in a way simultaneously analytical and artistic, fusing the strengths of both without taking away from either.
