The Dragon in the Cliff: A novel based on the life of Mary Anning

By Sheila Cole

Mary Anning contributed much to the world of paleontology with her discovery of the ichthyosaur skeleton in 1811, when she was thirteen years old. Unfortunately, someone else got the credit for her discovery, and so little is known about her.

Sheila Cole has skillfully mixed fact with fiction in this novel. Mary Anning was born in England, the daughter of a poor cabinetmaker, who, aside from making cabinets, had to collect fossils to sell to the upper class in order to make ends meet. When she was fifteen months old, she was struck by a bolt of lightning, and lived. Ever since then, people in her home town of Lyme said that she was brighter and livelier than the rest.

Mary was seven when she started going down to the beach to collect fossils, or curiosities as they were called then, with her father and brother, despite the disapproval of her mother and the neighbors (fossil-hunting wasn't considered appropriate for females back then).

When Mary was eleven, her father died and her brother had to work as an apprentice to an upholsterer. So it was up to Mary to go down to the beach alone and collect fossils to sell fossils to keep the family from starvation.

Then she found the ichyosaur head, and soon the rest of the body. She became acquainted with Miss Elizabeth Philpot, a woman who shared Mary's interest in fossils.

Mary then meets a boy named Henry de la Beche, who is also interested in geology and fossils. He asks Mary to take him collecting with her, and offers to pay her for every fossil they find together. They spend a lot of time together, and Mary becomes very fond of him. However, the others in Lyme do not approve, and Mary must struggle with her differences to find out where she fits in in society.

Overall, this was a good book. I liked how it was well-researched and very realistic. The author did a good job of bringing Mary to life, despite the few facts that are known about her. However, there were places in the novel where I thought the author could show rather than tell.

I give this book 4 out of 5 stars.

Hang A Thousand Trees With Ribbons: The Story of Phillis Wheatley

By Ann Rinaldi



I don't always like Ann Rinaldi's books, but I loved this one. Okay, it wasn't perfect. The sentences are annoyingly short and choppy in parts. But, on the positive side, this book really makes Phillis come alive, beyond the history books and scholarly studies. I must say that Rinaldi is good with mixing fact with imagination, and making her characters real. In case you were wondering, Phillis Wheatley was not only America's first female poet, she was also America's first African American poet, who lived in the eighteenth century.
Hang A Thousand Trees With Ribbons is a novel written in first-person from Phillis's point of view, and starts in the year 1761. Phillis describes how her father and uncle who, even though they were brothers, hated each other, as they were chieftains of two neighbor-tribes in Senegal, and could not agree. At the age of seven, Phillis, or Keziah as she was known in Africa, her mother and her friend Obour are captured by a band of Phillis's uncle's warriors and sold to slave traders for cowrie shells. In vidid detail, we learn of the horrors of Phillis's journey across the Atlantic Ocean, during which her mother dies and she herself barely lives through.
When she arrives in America, (Boston, to be specific) she is purchased by a well-to-do merchant named John Wheatley, and Obour is sold to a friend of Wheatley's. Mr. Wheatley decides to name his new servant Phillis, after the ship she came on. His son, Nathaniel, takes it upon himself to educate Phillis, teaching her how to read, write, speak Latin, among other things.
But because Phillis is black, and Nathaniel doesn't want to hurt his reputation as a beginning merchant by promoting a "nigra", he keeps Phillis tethered, and doesn't give her any opportunities to use her knowledge or show it off. So Phillis turns inside herself, writing down her thoughts and eventually writing her first poem.
The Wheatleys are amazed at Phillis's first poem, and Mrs. Wheatley has her read for and visit important people in Boston in an attempt to get that poem, and future poems of Phillis's, published.
Meanwhile, Phillis falls in love with Nathaniel, but doesn't dare admit it. An older servant in the Wheatley household, Aunt Cumsee by name, warns Phillis that Nathaniel, as well as all the Wheatley's, only regard Phillis as a "plaything", as something to show off to friends and acquaintances, and that her affections for Nathaniel will only come to grief. Obour, with whom Phillis keeps in touch, warns of the same things.
Unsuccessful at finding someone in Boston willing to publish a black woman's poetry, the Wheatleys decide to send Phillis to London with Nathaniel, who has business to attend to there. The Wheatleys are confident that the English will receive Phillis and publish her poetry. While all this is going on, tensions between England and America are heating up.

I can't say anymore, or I'll ruin the book. But I will say this: I highly recommend this novel. Whether you're familiar with Phillis or have never heard of her until now, you'll thoroughly enjoy the story.

I give this book 4 stars out of 5