Identifying Imaginary Beings

When I teach my World Building classes, I break “imaginary beings” into these categories:

• Humans with special or shape-shifting powers (vampires, wizards)
• Normal Animals or Animals with special or shape-shifting powers (any kind of talking, hyper-intelligent animal as in the Warriors series)
• Established Fantasy Beings (faeries, elves, dragons, unicorns)
• Completely Imaginary Beings (shadowflies and thunderbugs from my White Forest series, hobbits, and many creatures from Harry Potter)
• Artificial Beings: cyborgs and robots
• Aliens
• Gods/Angels/Spirit Realm

My White Forest beasts are a combination of known fantasy creatures (faeries, dragons) + combining elements to make new ones.

Activity: Tracking Your Imaginary Beings

As a class (or individually) keep an ongoing list of characters/creatures from the books they read and place them into each category above. Create a grid or check list like a treasure hunt and tack it up on the wall for the students to add their creatures.

You could even make up a BINGO type grid for students to fill in. They can “win” by naming book characters for each category.