Cryptids at Maine Student Book Award Celebration

The Maine Student Book Award Celebration (MSBAC) takes on a decidedly cryptozoological flavor this year.

As you read this, I’m in northern Maine, in a secret location filled with librarians and children, getting ready or presently talking about cryptozoology, cryptids, and leading workshops with the kids on casting footprints during a full-day gathering.

Actually, other than kidding about the “secret location,” all the rest is true. The MSBAC is occurring on Monday, May 5, 2008, in Penobscot, and I’m there right now, as this is being remotely posted. I’m on site with their out-of-state guest of honor, Kelly Milner Halls, author of Tales of the Cryptids. Her book is one of this year’s honorees on the Maine Student Book Award list.

Milner Halls is there as a whole group presenter and will also be doing smaller group workshops on masks.

I’m a guest speaker, as well, as her book contains two pages about me being a cryptozoologist, I’m seen (in some quarters) as an expert on the topic, and I added the extra of giving a Maine connection to the celebration. The Maine librarians discovered I was in Maine thanks to a book by a children’s author living in Spokane, Washington State. Discoveries have happened in strange ways, I guess. 🙂

Books, librarians, and children go well together. Chosen for the 2001 Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults List by the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) and American Library Association (ALA), my book, Cryptozoology A to Z is a foundation volume on the topic loved by young (and old) people. (Parents have told me it was this book that helped their resistant-reader-child begin to enjoying real books.)

Kelly Milner Halls’ book has received wonderful praise from me for years. It contains descriptions of unknown animals, children’s activities, and profiles of cryptozoologists. Tales of the Cryptids is a book I’ve highly recommended for kids since it was published.

The above drawing of the Gulf Coast cryptid, Altamaha-ha is by the artist and dinosaur exhibit designer Rick Spears, who is known for his illustrations in the award-winning book Tales of the Cryptids. Another version of Altamaha-ha is on the cover of the book.

It is good to know that librarians, such as ones throughout Maine, are stocking their shelves with great books like Kelly Milner Halls’ Tales of the Cryptids.

Loren Coleman About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct). Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015. Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.

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