Book Review: A Catalog of Curious Creatures by Shaun Jex

Reviewed by Jennifer Thomas

Some people collect shells, comic books, or keychains. Shaun Jex collects tales about American creatures that most of us have never seen, “the type that people tell stories about while sitting around a campfire, or just before bedtime,” as he says at the start of his new poetry collection, A Catalog of Curious Creatures. He has written poems about 81 of these creatures, from the agropelter to the whirling whimpus. They lurk in just about every corner of the United States, from the bayous of Louisiana to the shrubland of California, from the watering holes of Oklahoma to the northern woods. Although many of the creatures love to dine on unsuspecting humans, some of them just enjoy a bit of mischief: the argopelter, for instance, perches high up in conifers and pelts passersby with splinters. 

The table of contents is a feast for word lovers. Who could resist learning about creatures called gillygaloo, gumberoo, sheepsquatch, or whiffenpoof? My favorites are the foopengerkle, a 15-foot-long vegetarian (thankfully!) worm, and the humpdumple, which makes potholes in roads.

Great care has been taken with the look and feel of the collection. The pages have the worn, sepia-toned look of antique books, and each poem is anchored in a rustic twig frame. The fonts used for the poems could have come straight out of a 19^th century typesetter’s lead type drawers. Many of the poems provide a taste of old, almost-forgotten American dialects, and archival illustrations of several of the creatures add to the effect.

The collection is a window into a time before there was K-Pop on every cellphone and Netflix on every tablet, when the evening’s entertainment was cousin John playing his fiddle and Grandpa spinning tales by the hearth, while dear knows what lurked outside in the dark. Reading these poems is like listening to the hiss and pop of a scratchy antique recording of an old-timer singing folk tunes.

There are poems in this collection to fire the imagination of young readers, and there’s plenty of sly humor for older readers: 

Everyone who likes to fish has probably encountered the sizzerbill, which snatches prize fish from fishermen: “I almost caught the big one, the biggest fish you’ve ever seen / They woulda put my picture inside a magazine.”

If you’re a 10-year-old, ask an adult to buy this book for you so that you can start planning your Great American Road Trip when you grow up: which creatures are you going to try to find? If you’re an adult, buy this book to reconnect with your 10-year-old self. 

Once you’ve got your copy, read it with a flashlight when you’re tucked into your sleeping bag at night on a camping trip. It will help you to figure out what’s snapping the branches and crunching through the leaves just outside the tent wall. Perhaps you’ll even see a snipe, which is part-jackrabbit, part-squirrel, and maybe part-bird: “Its glowing eyes give off bright sparks / It’s really quite a sight / The fellas swear I’ll catch a glimpse / If I stay here all night.”

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Shaun Jex is a poet living in the Oklahoma City area with his wife, two children, three cats, a pair of snakes, and a bearded dragon. His poems have appeared in publications such as Dirigible Balloon, The Caterpillar Magazine, Little Thoughts Press, and others. When he isn't busy writing, he spends time peeking under rocks to see the bugs living there.  

Jennifer Thomas is a Canadian word fan who loves writing children’s poetry and helping kids to unleash their imaginations in poetry-writing workshops. She enjoys poring over very old dictionaries, blowing the dust off beautiful and oddball long-forgotten words, and sharing them. She’s at her happiest walking in the woods near her home in Canada with her dog, letting words for new poems bounce around in her head while she watches the world change through the four seasons. Find some of Jennifer’s poems and a few of her favourite old words at jenniferthomaswords.com.