blackheart's review against another edition
medium-paced
3.0
Not what I was expecting. More short stories than details of monsters and legends.
jonathanfs's review against another edition
4.0
A good intro to 23 different cryptids in the midwest. Is it exhaustive? No. Was it fun? Yep.
otterno11's review
2.0
There isn’t that much to Monsters of the Midwest really, it’s pretty much an ephemeral collection of condensed, paraphrased dramatizations of a few “real life” bits of monster lore, and barely lasted one evening of camping for me. Even for the stories I hadn’t heard before, like the Van Meter Mystery of Van Meter, Iowa, I feel like I didn’t learn much.
Arranged into rather arbitrary types, including land creatures, water creatures, bigfoots (bigfeet?), and so on, the entries are rarely very informative, and simply condense the narratives into a brief summary. For the most part, the authors draw their tales from just two or three sources for each entry, generally a more detailed book on the subject, an article from a popular magazine or newspaper, or even a creepypasta, helpfully compiled in a bibliography. Unfortunately, in the ebook, many of these sources link to ancient vintage web 1.0 sites or the infamous 404 error. There is, in the end, really no analysis of any of these legends, either as “cryptozoology” or as folklore.
Of course, as one of the “skeptics” finger waved at by the authors in the introduction, perhaps I’m asking for too much. It’s a quick read and I found out about a few weird new bits of local Midwestern folklore, so it would be a fun place to start for someone interested in learning the basics of some strange stories.
Arranged into rather arbitrary types, including land creatures, water creatures, bigfoots (bigfeet?), and so on, the entries are rarely very informative, and simply condense the narratives into a brief summary. For the most part, the authors draw their tales from just two or three sources for each entry, generally a more detailed book on the subject, an article from a popular magazine or newspaper, or even a creepypasta, helpfully compiled in a bibliography. Unfortunately, in the ebook, many of these sources link to ancient vintage web 1.0 sites or the infamous 404 error. There is, in the end, really no analysis of any of these legends, either as “cryptozoology” or as folklore.
Of course, as one of the “skeptics” finger waved at by the authors in the introduction, perhaps I’m asking for too much. It’s a quick read and I found out about a few weird new bits of local Midwestern folklore, so it would be a fun place to start for someone interested in learning the basics of some strange stories.
djbartelt's review
3.0
While semi-interesting, the book seems to be written in a style suitable to fifth graders and I'm not sure it was intentional. There was one story that creeped me out (The Clawed Green Beast).
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