580 animals, 304 pages and almost two kilos - when you get your hands on the Atlas of Real Monsters, you can't help but feel a certain sense of majesty. In a huge illustrated atlas with the subtitle Bestiary of Animal Evolution, Barbora Müllerová guides us from ancient times to the present, i.e. from the first signs of life on Earth to today's man. Already in the title, using the phrase "real monsters", it suggests that you don't need to go all the way to the realm of fairy tales to find fascinating (monsters) creatures - just look around, go to the zoo or go back a few years, to our ancestors.
Although the original concept of the book was created as a diploma thesis at the Faculty of Art and Design of the Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem, and therefore the visual component of the publication is the most prominent, the textual part and the idea of the book are not far behind. The author guides the reader through evolution, as it should and belongs from beginning to end, emphasizes continuity, explains the kinship of species and points out how many animals have gradually developed and improved to survive on planet Earth.
Apart from the attention-grabbing yellow cover, all illustrations are otherwise tuned in blue and red. Most of the creatures depicted are stylized in places, and using only two colors can cause some images to blend together. On the other hand, the author provides a legend at the beginning of the book with individual illustrated elements (e.g. scales, breathing holes), which indicates and shows on the creatures that all parts of the animals' bodies have their own function. We can also very realistically imagine the sizes of creatures that are compared on the pages to each other and to the figure of an adult person.
On the last pages of the book, in addition to the alphabetical index (otherwise the atlas is divided into individual chapters according to animal species), we also find a section called Natural History Heroes, which presents important figures involved in the study of the mentioned species. This part will be especially appreciated by older children or their parents - after all, the book is primarily recommended for children aged nine and over. In addition to the beautiful illustrations, they will really understand the biological sequence and evolutionary development that the author accompanies in the book. Parents will then have to explain some connections more to younger siblings, but this can lead to interesting joint discovery.
Valérie Štylerová
MÜLLEROVÁ, Barbora. Atlas opravdovských příšer: bestiář evoluce živočichů. V Praze: Labyrint, 2019.
The review was created at the Department of Journalism of FSV UK under the supervision of PhDr. Jana Čeňková, Ph.D.