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2020 Nominee

Mary Who Wrote Frankenstein

Written by Linda Bailey. Illustrated by Julia Sarda.
Published in 2018 by Tundra.

Mary was only 11-days-old when her mother died. Her strict and stiff father remarried a woman whom Mary disliked and who disliked her. Famous people visited their London home, one of them being Samuel Taylor Coleridge, whose odd and ghostly poem, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, stuck with her for the rest of her life. After being sent away to live with a family in Scotland for a couple of years, Mary returned home only to take off soon after with a brilliant young poet named Percy Bysshe Shelley and her stepsister. On their travels, they came across a ruined castle called Castle Frankenstein. Hmm… that name sounds familiar!

Eighteen months later, the trio’s travels took them to Switzerland where they met Lord Byron, a famous poet. One stormy evening, ghost stories were shared, and a challenge for everyone to come up with their own ghost story was set forth. Mary struggled with coming up with an idea. That is, until she overheard an odd conversation between Shelley and Byron that sparked her imagination into a sleepless night filled with dead body parts and an unsightly monster. It was then when the story of Frankenstein was born.

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