Lauren Daley writes in the Standard-Times on December 9, 2007, of her recent interview with The Polar Express (1985) author Chris Van Allsburg, 58, of Providence, Rhode Island.

Daley mentions a good quotation in Van Allsburg’s 1986 Caldecott Medal-winning acceptance for the now classic Christmas book:

“A world that might have Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster is clearly superior to one that definitely does not.”

Certainly, a world with cryptozoology in it appears to be one that is more hopeful about new animals and species, the human imagination and various possibilities, than one that only reflects some kind of view of a dark, static, frozen orb.