In 1977 a Dutch physician and a Dutch painter published a field guide to a species that does not exist, and wrote it so straight that a generation half believed them. Gnomes has never really gone away since. This is the revised edition Abrams reissued in 2023, 224 pages at almost twelve inches tall, with a new introduction by Brian Froud, the conceptual designer behind The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth.

Rien Poortvliet paints the way a naturalist sketches. The photographed spreads here show a Physical Appearance page where a gnome is examined through a magnifying glass and his felt boots, belt and cap are annotated in a looping hand. A full cutaway lays open a gnome house dug in under a tree root, every room lettered and keyed: the chimney, the sleeping alcove, the chest of dried leaves. Another page sorts the family into Garden, Farm, House and Siberian gnomes, the Siberian glowering out of a blue arctic night.

Then it wanders outdoors and stays there. A gnome walks under a snow loaded spruce in a winter watercolor with nothing else in it. A roe deer grazes while a gnome works beside her. There is a page of gnome first aid rendered on a fox, and a closing survey of the other twilight and night beings, where a goblin sits half in shadow with a rat in his fist.

Huygen writes it all up as observed fact, deadpan: how many children a gnome couple has, how strong a gnome is for his size, what the one who sat for Rembrandt had to say about him. Children read it for the underground house and the animals. Adults read it for the joke being played perfectly straight.

Hardcover with a cloth binding, 224 pages, 8 1/4 by 11 7/8 in. Cernunnos, an Abrams imprint, 5 September 2023. ISBN-13 9781419769856.

Play Oh Gnome You Don't Put a gnome on the shelf beside it Browse another big illustrated keepsake