Mary Who Wrote Frankenstein

Linda Bailey, illustrated by Jùlia Sardá Tundra Books Ages 5-8

Mary Who Wrote Frankenstein, by Toronto’s Linda Bailey, is an eye-catching volume of special interest with Halloween approaching. Stunningly illustrated by Barcelona’s Jùlia Sardá, it tells the story of young Mary, who would sit by her mother’s grave to read and dream. Her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, was an early feminist who died 11 days after Mary’s birth in 1797. When her father remarried, the girl took a dislike to her stepmother and, at the age of 14, was shipped off to Scotland to live with strangers. Two years later, when she returned to her parental home, the problems with her stepmother continued and Mary ran away with a young poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley, accompanied by her stepsister, Claire. Two years later they travelled to Switzerland, where — in the company of another poet, Lord Byron, and his friend John Polidori, a doctor — they found themselves in a large house on a wildly stormy night, telling ghost stories and trying to outdo one another. Mary was unable to come up with a story idea until days later, when she started writing what became one of the most famous Gothic tales of all time: Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. She was 18 years old. Bailey’s text is accessible to even the very young, and focuses on Mary as a child and teenager. But a four-page author’s note at the end of the book includes information and details that will fascinate readers of all ages and might prompt them to seek out not only Mary Shelley’s writing, but also that of her mother.