“On a wild, stormy night,” a group of friends gathered, reading “aloud from a book of frightening tales." A challenge emerged, whereby each member of the group, which included Mary Wollstonecraft, Lord Byron, and Percy Shelley, would create a ghost story of his or her own. The night before the competition was set to end, Mary still did not have her story. She sat alone in her room, while her friends downstairs talked about the power of electricity and the limits of science. Mary, who very much wanted to be a writer like her mother and the poets below, couldn’t sleep. Instead, her imagination took her to the “chilling tale" that would become the classic Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus, first published in 1818 and still widely read today. A story which heralded the beginning of the genre known as science fiction.
This gorgeous NY Times/NY Public Library Best Illustrated Children’s Book is an engaging look at a young woman who wanted to prove that “a woman’s writing could be just as important as a man’s.” Which it is, and which she did! The basis for Fulton's picture book was the forward Mary wrote for the 1831 edition of Frankenstein, but Fulton explains the liberties she took in her own telling.
’Tis the season for spooks and monsters, so it’s a great time to enjoy this origin story of one of the most famous monsters of all time.
--Lynn
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