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THE MYSTERY PICTURE BOOK
I have a childrens' picture book that I read, owned, and loved, probably around the early 2000s, but have never been able to find any
information about. Please email me here or write in my
guestbook if you have an idea of what this book is.
Originally, this book was owned by my friend who was homeschooled like I was. His mother spoke French fluently and had lived in France
before. This book was in French. I would guess it was from France proper, but I suppose there's a chance it could have been from Quebec.
In any case, his mother had this book as a way to help him learn French. But I loved the book so much that eventually the family let me
have it since I was getting more out of it than they were. However, I couldn't speak or read French back then (or now, but I would
probably be able to understand more of it after high-school French). I just loved the pictures so much that it made up for it.
The book was based on the alphabet, where every letter had a fictional monster whose name started with that letter. For each one, there
was a page-size illustration on the left-side and a paragraph explaining about the monster on the right side. First, let's talk about the
illustration style. It was very cartoony and looked a lot like Invader Zim if I had to compare it to a particular cartoon. The
eyes are what I remember most. They looked extremely simplistic, like your typical American cartoon: a big white circle with a smaller
circle in the center for a pupil. The Simpsons-style, essentially. However, I remember this book being unique because instead of a
large white circle and a small circle filled with black, it was just an empty white circle for the pupil in the middle of a larger white
circle. No black color. I'd never seen a cartoon like that so it stuck with me. I actually copied that for years and years when I drew
my own cartoony characters. All the pages had a color theme. That is to say, they were colored all in different shades of one particular
color. But the book cycled through a lot of different colors depending on the page, like orange, green, blue, purple, etc. Apparently the
text on the side could be pretty grotesque and gory. I know that because I asked a family member who knew a bit of French to try to translate
it for me and she thought whatever she read was gross. I don't remember the details, but it was stuff about capturing, cutting up, cooking,
and eating children. Seemed like pretty standard fairy tale stuff to me though.
The art style was cartoony, "modern," and a little edgy. As I said, it looked like Invader Zim, not like some classical fairy tale
selection of monsters. I don't remember all 26 monsters, but these are the ones that I have some memory of:
A: Orange theme. This monster lived in cold, icy regions. The picture showed a frumpy eskimo child glaring over at the monster, standing
next to him. The monster looked kind of like Cheesasaurus Rex, the Kraft Mac and
Cheese dinosaur mascot. But he was wearing a parka and pulling a sled. I think he might have had some spears over his shoulder for
hunting seals. He was looking at the eskimo child with one eyebrow raised, as if inviting him to go hunting with him or offering him a
tool or something like that.
M: Orange theme. This monster was a "cool," Hollywood-exec type. He looked like a big ogre or something, but he was wearing a white
suit like a Miami drug kingpin etc. that obscures my memory of what he looked like. He was on a lawnchair next to a pool at his mansion,
presumably. He was wearing sunglasses and crossing his legs, chilling outside. He had a martini glass raised up to the camera, which
had a child's severed finger in it instead of an umbrella.
N: Purple theme. This monster looked like one of Santa's elves, but with green skin, sharp, yellow, teeth, and a serpentine tongue. It
was also flat and hid itself by disguising itself as a carpet or rug and lying on the floor. It was in some house's den in front of a
burning fire place, raising its head up to confront us.
O: Green theme. This monster either hid itself in a bunch of vines or WAS the vines itself, but I couldn't tell because I couldn't read
the French on the side. The image looked like a swamp or a toxic waste dump. It was a stagnant river surrounded by a bunch of trees on the
sides, and there were a number of vines that came out of the trees and combined together into a big intertwined ball in the middle of
the tree enclave. Inside the ball there were two helpless-looking eyes staring out at the viewer, and a human arm sticking out the other
end. It seemed pretty obvious that this was a human victim who was trapped in the vine-ball. I think there might have also been a leg
sticking out with a shoe dropping off of it.
X: Purple theme. This monster was the most unusual in the book and it was the one where I most wanted to know the French explanatory
text. All the other monsters in this book had fanciful, made-up names. But this one was just named "X" (with the quotation marks). The
illustration was of a child reading a book in a comfy chair in front of a large bookshelf in some study room. The book has some white
cloud arising from it and enveloping his head, so you can only see his eyes, looking confused and afraid. I suppose the theme is that
the monster "X" is either the letter X itself or some representation of the great unknown.
Of course, I haven't seen this book in years and years, so a lot of these details may be off. The last time I saw this book was when my
family was cleaning out our attic and garage and throwing away a lot of trash we didn't need anymore. I found the book but it was in a
heavily deteriorated state. I wanted to hold on to it, but my dad found it when I set it down and threw it away before I was able to get
back to it again. This was probably around 2005 or 2006.
IT'S NOT THESE
Flanimals: This is a silly series of made-up animals, written by Ricky
Gervais and illustrated by Rob Steen. Someone has suggested that a French version of this is what I encountered, but it is not, for a few
reasons. First of all, Flanimals has no alphabet theme, and that was very much front and center in the French book. Next, the
first book in the Flanimals series came out in 2004, and I'm pretty certain that I would have been reading this French book at
least a few years before then. The illustrations in Flanimals are also on a blank white background, whereas the ones in this
French book were full-page illustrations with full backgrounds. Lastly, while the illustrations in Flanimals are similarly
colorful and cartoony, they look very different from the French book. They have a lot of shading, whereas the French book looked a
little more flat like Invader Zim, Dexter's Lab, Powerpuff Girls, etc. with lines filled with solid colors. It was
definitely closer to Invader Zim than those other two though.
Captain Pottie's Wildlife Encyclopedia:
Apparently, Ricky Gervais was sued by the creator of this book because Flanimals was too similar to it (completely ridiculous
claim, by the way, the author of this book is a dipshit and an asshole for doing that). This book is incredibly obscure so I can't find
much information about it. But a quick look makes it clear that it is not the book I have in mind. While the book does indeed have an
alphabet theme, the illustrations are all in black and white and don't look anything like the illustrations in the French book.
Animal Land: This blogger talks about the above
lawsuit and shows a strange book called Animal Land from 1897 (yes, that old) which is similar to both. Again, the illustrations
look nothing like the French book and the descriptions are too short.
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