100 Most Feared Creatures

For this week's selection, I decided to browse the non-fiction section at Half Price Books and see what caught my eye; I'm there at least once a week anyway so it seemed like a good opportunity.

I chose this eye-catching book from Scholastic-100 Most Feared Creatures by Anna Claybourne. I'm always the first one to suggest heading into the reptile house at the zoo, or checking out the creepy eel exhibit at the aquarium so I definitely wanted to check this out.

This book does not disappoint. Made to appeal to 9-12 year-old readers, this book is full of colorful photos, a scary scale to rank the creatures, a table of contents to easily search for types, and a complete list ranking them from least to most terrifying.

I'm sure everyone is dying to know so I'll go ahead and tell you-the scariest, most feared creature is......the Black Mamba. Native to Africa, the Black Mamba is not only incredibly fast, moving at speeds of up to 12.5 miles per hour, it is extremely venomous, with a bite that can kill in just 20 minutes. Also, they can grow to be 15 feet long. I will be sticking to looking at snakes through very thick glass after reading all five pages of snake info!

There is a ton of interesting information and cool creatures to check out. A few of the ones I chose to highlight are the Texas Horned Lizard-this little guy can squirt blood out of his eyeballs at enemies! Luckily, he sticks to hunting insects.

The goonch is one I had never heard of, and I almost wish that were still the case. This 7-foot long "giant catfish" lurks in Asian rivers, hunting humans. That's correct, hunting humans. It is believed that the fish got a taste for human flesh after eating the dead bodies that would sink from funeral pyres. It also has backward-pointing teeth, so once it bites down, prey cannot escape.

I'm a huge fan of Scholastic books. They use a good ratio of text to photos; there's enough information to be considered informative or explanatory while including photos graphic or intense enough to thrill readers of all ages. I also trust the information-Scholastic is a reputable publisher of educational materials that has been around since long before even my parents went to school. While I probably wouldn't let a young child read into this too closely, I think these kind of facts would really interest the target age group.

What I really took away from this book though, was that the water is full of terrifying creatures and should be avoided at all costs. Sharks, eels, bacteria, snakes, spiders, crocodiles, even hippos, which made #8 on the list, can all be deadly and should definitely be respected as truly fearsome.