Here is a whole menagerie of strange beasts -- fire-breathing dragons, a tiny beast that carried its strength in a hollow in its skull, a gigantic beast with the body of a lion and the head of an eagle, and others just as strange. A few were kindly, but most were fierce and very, very wicked. They laid waste whole countrysides, and gobbled up whole villages full of people.

These beasts existed only in people's minds, but they were very real to those who believed in them. Knights and heroes rode forth to battle the dragons. They searched the forest for the snow-white unicorn that could be captured only with the help of an innocent girl. They sought spells and magic weapons to conquer animals too terrible to look upon.

Most of these beats-that-never-were come to us from long ago, but a few of them are of our own time. Helen Jacobson has corralled the most exciting of them, and Lewis Zacks has faithfully reproduced them in his drawings.

From the dust jacket