CURIOUS CREATURES

A menagerie of magical creatures from the movie worlds of Harry Potter and Newt Scamander.

Like Jody Revenson’s Extraordinary People and Fascinating Places (2016), this album features spare assortments of flimsy pop-ups, stickers, and detachable character cards along with sheaves of film stills, sketches, concept art, and glimpses behind the scenes. In the narrative portion, Zahed occasionally gets away from the typical companion volume’s standard-issue puffery, though, to offer insights into the real animals that portrayed or inspired the 49 creatures profiled here. Fans of the Potterverse will welcome the chance to see beasts and beings from Nifflers and Murtlaps to Swooping Evil, Centaurs, and creepy Inferi posing for close inspection the way they never did in the films. And even nonfans of the Potterverse (if there are any) may be intrigued to discover that Hagrid’s mastiff, Fang, was played by six live dogs and a drooling animatronic version, for instance, or that designers studied the facial features of rhinos, snakes, lizards, and tortoises—plus “an angry Doberman pinscher”—before crafting the Hungarian Horntail dragon.

Problematic for library shelves but a keepsake likely to inspire repeat browsing.