3Welcome to the magical world of Alebrijes Alebrijes are legendary, brightly coloured, imaginary creatures which take elements from many different animals, such as cats, fish, dragons, and dogs with bird's feet and bat's wings. Alebrijes were first created by Pedro Linares L pez, an artist from Mexico. The story begins as far back as 1936 when Linares fell terribly ill and while falling in and out of consciousness he dreamed many incredible, amazing dreams. In these dreams, he found himself walking in a forest, and came across some strange, fantastic creatures that kept chanting, "alebrije, alebrije, alebrije". In Spanish, "alebrijes" is pronounced "al - ay - bree - hez". Pedro was very lucky, and made a miraculous recovery. When he became strong and healthy again, he decided to bring the creatures he met in his dream to life in paintings and sculptures. The original sculptures of alebrijes were made of paper mache, clay and carved wood, brightly painted by hand in all shapes and sizes. Alebrijes are fun, and in this Alebrijes colouring book 1 of the series there are 40 exciting original alebrijes designs for you to colour at your leisure. Once you've coloured all of the alebrijes in this book, you could even try to dream new ones, and make imaginary alebrijes of your own Note: The illustrations on this book are inspired on original Mexican alebrijes shapes, patterns and textures in order to keep them true to the original alebrijes style. Levels of difficulty may vary for each design which makes the Alebrijes series an ideal family colouring book.