The Terrible Hodag and the Animal Catchers

Since discovering hodags in cartoonist Chris Monroe's Violet Days, I keep hearing about these mythological creatures. I can't believe I never knew about them before. Maybe I'm just tapping into the hodag zeitgeist or something.

My latest hodag sighting is a picture book by Caroline Arnold, with art by John Sandford, called The Terrible Hodag and the Animal Catchers. I was immediately struck by the quality of Sandford's scratchboard illustrations -- and the fact that they are black and white. It makes so much sense for this tall tale, set in the early 20th or late 19th century.


Sandford works the spread, using the space of both pages dynamically. In this scene, the lumberjacks confront the city men who have come to capture the hodag so they can place it in a zoo.


Sandford changes scale from spread to spread -- from close-ups of faces to landscapes with tiny figures among the trees.


This one is fun! Instead of literally showing the hodag tramping through the woods to make it hard for the hunters to follow its trail, Sandford shows the results of the hodag's efforts.


And then we finally get to see the hodag and it's huge, filling up the whole spread, almost pushing the words out of the frame.

Definitely one for the hodag hall of fame.