Reviews
Before the word dinosaur existed, a young female fossilist helped identify the creatures.
How can a biographer truly know a subject’s unrecorded emotions? With this immediate and engaging account, Kurtz solves that problem by asking readers how they might feel were they to experience what Mary Morland (1797-1857) went through, like being expected to sit decorously in a parlor rather than go outside exploring or being sent to live with friends after her mother’s death. Immersing readers in historical context, Kurtz also challenges the conventions of the time by posing cheeky questions about whether Mary met these social expectations, then answering confidently in the negative. Instead, Mary collected shells and fossils, illustrated books by her husband, fossilist William Buckland, and traveled Europe with him, meeting scientists and visiting fossil sites. In Kurtz’s perky prose, Mary springs to life as independent, curious, and relatable. Though the author emphasizes her subject’s collaboration with Buckland, she acknowledges that women in science were usually unrecognized at the time. Nothing in the text indicates Mary’s or her husband’s English nationality, though we might deduce it from the author’s note. Potter’s delicate pastel illustrations evoke the naïve art of the period, as well as its social setting. One image depicts Mary’s many children romping in their “household of chaos.” These scenes perfectly suit the text’s project of relevance and inspiration.
A delightful STEAM biography that spotlights a female scientist who deserves to be better known. (bibliography, further reading) (Informational picture book.) 4-8
How can a biographer truly know a subject’s unrecorded emotions? With this immediate and engaging account, Kurtz solves that problem by asking readers how they might feel were they to experience what Mary Morland (1797-1857) went through, like being expected to sit decorously in a parlor rather than go outside exploring or being sent to live with friends after her mother’s death. Immersing readers in historical context, Kurtz also challenges the conventions of the time by posing cheeky questions about whether Mary met these social expectations, then answering confidently in the negative. Instead, Mary collected shells and fossils, illustrated books by her husband, fossilist William Buckland, and traveled Europe with him, meeting scientists and visiting fossil sites. In Kurtz’s perky prose, Mary springs to life as independent, curious, and relatable. Though the author emphasizes her subject’s collaboration with Buckland, she acknowledges that women in science were usually unrecognized at the time. Nothing in the text indicates Mary’s or her husband’s English nationality, though we might deduce it from the author’s note. Potter’s delicate pastel illustrations evoke the naïve art of the period, as well as its social setting. One image depicts Mary’s many children romping in their “household of chaos.” These scenes perfectly suit the text’s project of relevance and inspiration.
A delightful STEAM biography that spotlights a female scientist who deserves to be better known. (bibliography, further reading) (Informational picture book.) 4-8
Wry interrogative narration energizes this engaging portrait of scientist and illustrator Mary Morland (1797–1857). A picture of the subject as curious about the natural world emerges through mentions of 19th-century social norms (“Did she perch on her chair like a prim little miss? Well, what would you do if the whole world was waiting outside?”). Mentored by a scientifically minded family friend, Morland becomes an avid observer. A meet-cute eventually brings matrimony and motherhood into Morland’s life while allowing her to sustain her scientific interests, as when her fossilist husband uses her illustrations to present his discovery of Megalosaurus bones. Potter’s signature watercolor scenes suitably evoke the era’s aesthetics. While Kurtz is candid about the way Morland “worked in the shadows,” the overall telling emphasizes the figure’s enthusiastic embrace of the world’s wonders. An author’s note concludes. Ages 4–8.
As a young woman in the 1800s, Mary Morland was expected to live a quiet life in service to her household. Instead, Mary had an adventurous childhood exploring the outdoors, and an adoptive caretaker further encouraged her to become a keen observer of the natural world. She kept careful journals of her findings and corresponded with male scholars in exchanges of ideas and information, ultimately marrying a fellow scientist and rearing a freewheeling family. Her drawings of prehistoric animals—the word dinosaur had yet to be coined—and careful fossil collecting make her one of the earliest paleontologists of note, despite history relegating her contributions to the shadows. Her remarkable life makes for a sensational story, and the fascinating book makes a point to contrast Mary’s behavior with the societal expectations of the time. It’s as inspirational as it is informative, frequently posing provocative questions along the way. Unusual and arresting illustrations have a nineteenth-century folk art feel, wonderfully capturing her unusual life and scientific sketches. A splendid spotlight on a lesser-known but significant scientific life. — Emily Graham
While Mary Morland (1797–1857) was born during a time in which girls were to be seen and seemingly not heard, she broke through those norms and explored the world around her, becoming particularly fascinated with rocks and fossils, illustrating anything that spoke to her and corresponding with scientists in the field of geology. Later in her life, she married a geologist and helped him illustrate the first ever dinosaur (before they were even called dinosaurs) but was never officially credited. This is an inspiring story of an early pioneer scientist the world should know. The artwork is fun and detailed. The first half of the book points to how unconventional Morland was in her upbringing and then gets more detailed in her adventurous life of fossils and science and raising her children to be as inquisitive as she was. While it touches on how she was not credited for her illustrations that helped scientists understand dinosaurs more, the tone is uplifting in sharing what was not as widely known as it is now. The back matter includes a list of selected sources, a list of resources for the curious, an author’s note that dives deeper into why women were often uncredited for their contributions in scientific endeavors, and shares about two others, Mary Anning and Mary Ann Mantell, who also helped uncover facts about dinosaurs. VERDICT: An excellent picture book biography about the beginnings of the study of dinosaurs all thanks to a curious and little-known woman.
A Look Inside the Book
