A Fan's Playground

This is a novelized account of Mary Anning's life! Super exciting, yes? For those who are not massive dinosaur nerds, Mary Anning was a working-class woman in the early 19th century who was a fossil hunter and made some pretty significant finds (including ichthyosaur and plesiosaur fossils) and had a thorough understanding of what she found, which were really important in the development of scientific thought on the history of life on earth. She was very knowledgeable and capable, but of course never seen in the same light as the educated high-class men who talked with her, studied her fossils, and published papers on them.

This book was a very enjoyable read. It's from the perspective of two women, in alternating chapters - Mary Anning, and her friend Elizabeth Philpot who was also a fossil collector.

I liked the generally female focus of the book, and how the important relationship was always the friendship between Mary and Elizabeth as opposed to with any of the men who come in and out of their lives. And I like how it legitimizes these women's interest in and role in the scientific discourse of the time.

But I also felt like it did a bit of a disservice both to the friendship and to Mary's character.

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Two books today! VERY DIFFERENT FROM EACH OTHER.

( Dinotopia, by James Gurney, illustrated by same )

( The School of Venus, or The Ladies Delight, Reduced into Rules of Practice, by Anonymous )