Monsters of many different kinds rampage through acclaimed science writer Sylvia Funston’s newest look at “strange science.” The Kraken broods beneath the sea, Thunderbird storms from the sky, killer tomatoes stalk the urban streets, and dust mites breed in the pillows.

As this list suggests, Funston ranges the globe and through folklore, movie culture, and contemporary science to find monsters both imaginary and all too real. Sometimes the mythic monster is shown to have a real-life counterpart or namesake, as the fantasy dragon lives on in the Komodo lizard, and the Cyclops who terrorized Odysseus is remembered in the one-eyed Cyclops water flea. Monster stories have been used to explain extreme weather, illness, and other natural phenomena, but Funston chills her readers’ blood with creepy facts about “real monsters” like the AIDS virus, botfly parasites, and slime mold.

Monsters is much more, however, than just an encyclopedia of alarming creatures. Funston invites the reader to think about why people have imagined monsters, and why we still like to invent and retell these stories, changing their traditional categories to include aliens from outer space. Linking Godzilla with the Chernobyl disaster and Dracula with blood diseases, she makes fascinating connections between scientific knowledge and popular culture, and manages to suggest psychological and scientific explanations without spoiling the fun. Lively, comical pictures and some suitably grisly photographs effectively support the text. Although not an activity book, Monsters does include a board game and a helpful index.