"Animals are neither good nor bad," Drake replies.

Hand shooting in the air for another turn, the overexcited young scientist wants to know: "Have you ever seen a yeti?"

"I trekked high into the Himalayas looking for a yeti and found one, but he didn't like my hat," Drake recalls.

The intrepid Drake, the alter ego of Englishman Dugald A. Steer, passed a recent afternoon delighting a dozen budding monsterologists with tales of the ferocious three-headed chimera, the flying, eagle-headed hippogriff and the rarest of all fabulous beasts -- the fire-bathing phoenix.

The kids, and the man, could have stayed all day wrapped in their world of Ology, a genre in children's fantasy that burst out of Harry Potter's shadow in 2003 with the stunning, jewel-studded volume Dragonology.

Five volumes and $15 million in worldwide sales later, the elaborate series has spawned companion field guides, code-writing kits, chapter adventures, model sets and other spinoffs, along with a crush of imitators. There's a new licensing agreement for Nintendo DS and Wii games and plans by Universal Studios to develop a movie.

Parents are as smitten as kids and seemingly undaunted by the $19.99 cost for each encyclopedic book of real-looking fiction, including the August release of the Victorian-era Monsterology, to be followed this month by Spyology, set in 1957.

Steer, 43, who lives outside London with his Spanish wife, Ana, was working at Templar Publishing when he was plucked to edit Dragonology. His bosses were so pleased, they asked him to sign on as writer, using kid-friendly pen names for period characters that serve as narrators.

Drake is a dragon preservationist with a yacht called the Hydra. His "proper study" of the beasts includes skeletal diagrams and minute details on the development of their eggs. After documenting his dragon adventures, Drake is the first repeated narrator with a round-the-world trip to "shine the bright light of science" on other mythical creatures in the latest book.

"It was experimental," Steer said of the Ology concept. "The books seemed to come in at quite a high price point when we were done. I haven't managed to buy my yacht yet, so you never know."

Steer, the writer and editor, left in his wake about three dozen other children's books, including some perky pop-up titles in the "Snappy" series for younger kids.

The Ology books extend down to kids as young as 6, though Noah has loved them since he was 5. So does his little sister, despite a bit of oodginess when read at night.

"The Monsterology has so many types of things that are so amazing to me that I really like it," Noah gushes after winning a raffle and tearing open the wrap on his prize, a mountainous, complete set of Dragonology books.

"They really make it look so real," he said as he sat near two uniformed girls, their heads buried in Monsterology at Steer's costumed reading during his first full-blown book tour in the United States.

"I write things I would have really liked when I was a kid," Steer said. "I would have really liked a book on dragons."

Each book is meticulously written and illustrated from the point of view of its writer. What sets them apart are unique troves of hands-on adornments to touch, feel, pull out, flip over and show off. In Monsterology, that means a bit of amber with a prehistoric phoenix parasite inside, ashes from a phoenix nest, a silvery hair from the mane of a unicorn and Drake's creepy black-and-white sketches and notes on humanoid creatures that include zombies and vampires.

Perhaps a little too real for some kids?

"You don't know my son's love of these books," said Noah's mom, Amy Pellettieri, a teacher in Manhattan. "But sometimes we have trouble reading them at bedtime because we're scared."

Steer suggests not doing that, soothing Noah: "These are friendly monsters that live very far away."

Generally, Steer said, "Children are quite clever. They usually know what's real and what's not."

Drake, like Steer's other narrators, is brought alive in a back-story: Born in 1822 in Sussex. Fascinated as a boy by paleontology, he meets Dragon Master Ebenezer Crook at age 14, studying under Crook after he graduates from university in 1843.

Steer grew up bookish but nature-loving near London. He studied literature and philosophy at Bristol University, where he wrote poetry. He trained as an English teacher and spent five years in Spain. He was on staff at Templar for 10 years, staying through the first three Ologies.

For Pirateology, Steer morphs into 18th-century pirate hunter Capt. William Lubber, with the book written as ship's log. In Mythology, the slippery Steer becomes Lady Hestia Evans, a devotee of Lord Byron whose primer on Greek myths is followed by an early 19th century English nobleman touring ancient Greek sites. He becomes Master Merlin for Wizardology and amateur Egyptologist Emily Sands for Egyptology, written as her travel journal from 1926.

How did Steer soar so far in so little time?

"Because I could do it," he said. "They were thinking of looking for writers but I had written a lot in-house and so I wanted to write it. And there we go. I think I've done an OK job."

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