Rare Treasure: Mary Anning and Her Remarkable Discoveries - Hardcover

Brown, Don

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0395922860 ISBN 13: 9780395922866

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1999

Synopsis

Stunning watercolors and elegant prose detail the story of remarkable scientist Mary Anning, who, as a young girl, discovered an extraordinary skeleton at Lyme Regis in England, which led to a lifelong passion for finding and collecting rare fossils.

About this title

About the Author

Don Brown is the award-winning author and illustrator of many picture book biographies. He has been widely praised for his resonant storytelling and his delicate watercolor paintings that evoke the excitement, humor, pain, and joy of lives lived with passion. School Library Journal has called him a current pacesetter who has put the finishing touches on the standards for storyographies.” He lives in New York with his family.

Reviews

Grade 2-4-Two more picture-book biographies celebrate Mary Anning's bicentennial, recounting her childhood discovery of a complete ichthyosaur and noting her adult career as a self-taught paleontologist. Atkins follows the earlier lead of Catherine Brighton in The Fossil Girl (Millbrook, 1999) and Laurence Anholt in Stone Girl, Bone Girl (Orchard, 1999) as she focuses on the single year in which 11-year-old Anning slowly scraped the sand and stone of the Lyme Regis shore to uncover the huge reptile fossil. Her patience and persistence, are emphasized in a smoothly crafted narrative employing more fictionalized conversation and detail than any of the other books. Dooling's watercolors on textured paper employ a predominantly blue, gray, and brown palette conveying the loneliness of Anning's pursuit in this murky, seaside place. Like Brighton and Anholt, Atkins adds a final author's note commenting on Mary Anning's adult discoveries. Don Brown, in a smaller horizontal volume, omits such a note. His text quickly recounts Anning's childhood discovery of the ichthyosaur, and goes on to sketch a chronological account of the woman's entire life. The tan-and-blue watercolor scenes are less compelling than the bolder work in the other books, though several dramatic episodes punctuate the dangerous terrain in which Anning worked. The emphasis here is on the richness of spirit compensating for economic poverty. Both Stone Girl and Fossil Girl are more strongly realized and appealing works, but Sea Dragon reads well, and Rare Treasure is a competent simple biography. None of the writers reveal their actual sources of information on Anning's life. The tale of a child making such a distinctive discovery is inherently interesting, and the scientist's career is a worthwhile story, too. The array of books should attract a wide variety of readers and serve well in science classrooms.
Margaret Bush, Simmons College, Boston
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

As he did in Alice Ramsey's Grand Adventure, Brown once again salutes a spunky heroine who made history, this time focusing on Mary Anning's archeological finds and their relevance to prehistoric research. He drives home the point that 200 years after her birth in 1799, Mary Anning and her contributions continue to inform the scientific community. Unlike Laurence Anholt's recent Stone Girl, Bone Girl, Brown's succinct text downplays the early death of Mary's father, focusing instead on her commitment to carrying on his fossil-hunting legacy, and plays up her partnership with her older brother, Joseph. The limited palette of blues, grays and browns effectively serves double duty, successfully contrasing the poverty of the Anning family with the richness of the seaside digging sites, while also setting off the fossil discoveries, which are recorded on parchment-like paper with hand-lettered labels. Aspiring scientists will be encouraged by this inspiring portrayal of a woman who made a childhood passion into her life's work. Ages 4-8.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Anning's life has proven irresistible for picture-book creators in recent months, with Catherine Brighton's The Fossil Girl (p. 627) and Laurence Anholt's Stone Girl, Bone Girl (p. 62) among the entries. Brown (One Giant Leap, 1998, etc.) opens with the thrilling incident from Mary's infancy: while her nursemaid and two companions died under a tree struck by lightning, Mary survived. Taught by her father to hunt for fossils on the rocky beaches and cliffs near Lyme Regis, Mary continued to do so after his death, to help support herself and her family. Without formal education, she studied and read and always pursued fossils, despite physical danger. Richard Owens, the scientist who coined the word ``dinosaur,'' came to hunt fossils with her. Brown's prose has a light and poetic touch, and his watercolors, with their dramatic vistas, small figures, and fossil sketches, suit the tone nicely. He effortlessly imbues a small, appealing package with a lot of information, and a little inspiration besides. (Picture book/biography. 4-8) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0395922860
• ISBN 13: 9780395922866
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 32