The artwork was very interesting. I was expecting a story and not a catalog of beasts. It could lead to a story very easily by having the beasts emerge from the pages and run amok. I also thought the backgrounds might be “Magic Eye” pictures. But no such luck.

And A Book is a good lesson for how children should treat books - with the imaginative consequence of angering the monsters who live within the pages! Each page features a different character - mermaids, unicorns, golems - and different actions - leaving the book in the rain, tearing a page, getting food on the pages, etc.

There are times where the art is gaudy or distracting, but overall I like how the illustrations depict the character trying to protect or repair the book from the "warnings" on the opposite page and the attention to detail of including smaller and smaller mirror illustrations on the book pages the boy is holding.

Note: I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley. I was not compensated in any other fashion for the review and the opinions reflected below are entirely my own. Special thanks to the publisher and author for providing the copy.

This interesting book goes through characters of mythology while a boy curls up to bed. I liked the fourth wall breaking, though the photorealistic art was slightly unnerving. I found the dog and things like the "rips" and "spills" in the book very charming, and I think children interested in mythical creatures would enjoy this book.

Thank you to NetGalley and Notable Kids Publishing for the opportunity to honestly review, "...And a Book". I appreciated the subject and intent of this book. As a public librarian, teaching children to care for books and avoid common pitfalls in damaging them is a constant effort. I know the book-within-a-book aspect will also appeal to younger readers. Finally, the back matter is interesting and well done.

However, when it comes to purchasing children's books, of equal consideration to subject matter is the art and visuals. While the medieval typography was beautiful, the crowded, busy illustrations in this book were not appealing at all. Obligatory disclaimer that beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder, but to me the art looked flat, stilted, and weirdly clip-art-esque. Even the way the art was placed on the page was jarring and did not seem to flow. After the appeal of the content and title, the interior artwork was an unwelcome surprise.

The plot is basically a poem describing various mythical creatures, which makes it a very thin book but it has very lush illustrations which make up for it. Probably too short to be worth buying, but not a bad book to get from the library.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

When I was a kid this book would be on my shelf because that was the kind of books that made me believe in magic and fantastic creatures. I still have some from my childhood with these kind of amazing illustrations.

I loved to look at the pages even if the text was short. A nice story to introduce the little readers to some famous mythical creatures and their special personalities, also it will make them love their books and to be more careful with them. I liked it and I hope that a lot of children will find it as captivating because these kind of books will never get old.

In a similar vein to Charlie Cook's Favourite Book by Julia Donaldson or We are in a Book! by Mo Willems, this is an interactive and multimodal book where characters react to what is happening on the page.
However, And a Book: The Inhabitants of Myth is not great. The language was so trite and simplistic that I think even young readers would feel patronised. Also, while I get the creative effect they were going for by showing 'damage' to the pages, it made some pages very difficult to read (I have no idea what happened to the mermaid). A good premise but lacking in execution.

Thanks Notable Kids Publishing and Michael Molinet for the ARC. This is a charming, whimsical, yet light cautionary tale with which to begin building a child's library, and a welcome addition to this young at heart woman's library. It's nice to see something uplifting and fun coming out in these uncertain times. The art and immersive style are lovely. This would make a really fun film.

The "A word on the words", section is a fun mythological creatures introduction for a kid.

This came across as attractive, intelligent – yet also flawed. It's a simple tale (if tale actually be the right word) of a lad and how he interacts with this book. Every double-page spread we see either him reading it, or avoiding a threat to the book that matches with the mythical creature on that page – when there's a danger of it getting rained on it's the page with a mermaid, a character interested in colour (or one specifically) comes along when he is reminded not to start drawing over it all, the most dangerous-looking beastie coincides with the potential damage a dog's mouth could do to it – you hopefully get the idea. There's definitely merit in the artistic skill, with the book appearing in its own pages, read by a boy not too dissimilar to us, taking us down a particular rabbit-hole. What counts against it is the text – some of these couplets are clunky and then some. Also, when the damage is visualised as impairment to the lettering, some of it is really not easy to read at first go. And the end matter didn't seem to match the easy, all-ages friendliness of the rest. But on the whole this was well worth a look – the moral of caring for books of all shapes and sizes is a fine one, and so I wish this well. Three stars don't seem fair for what it tried to do, but four stars implies it pretty much succeeded, and there was too large a case for stating it didn't quite do that. It still definitely deserves consideration.