Mary Anning's Curiosity

The amazing story of how the world’s greatest fossilist found her first huge find at the age of twelve.

Mary was born in 1799 in Lyme Regis, England. Her father, a carpenter and part-time fossil hunter, taught his children to look for fossils.

When her father injured himself and was unable to work, Mary quit school and took up fossil hunting full-time to help support her family, a task that became even more important when her father died, leaving the Annings in debt.

At the age of twelve, Mary, with her older brother Joe, found what they believed to be the skeleton of a gigantic crocodile, the Great Croc of the legends. Between dodging her rival fossil hunter the Curiman, and the sheer work of carefully digging out the fossil, Mary took almost a year to excavate what would later be termed the Ichthyosaurus.

Mary Anning was uneducated, poor and a woman, but her life’s work of fossil hunting led her to make many discoveries that influenced our understanding of prehistoric creatures and the age of the Earth.

In this triumphant novel about scientific discovery, Monica Kulling brings Mary Anning and her world to life for young readers. 

Key Text Features
author's note
historical context
resources
facts
further reading

MONICA KULLING is the author of more than sixty books for children, including Aunt Pearl, illustrated by Irene Luxbacher; and Ruby’s Hope: A Story of How the Famous “Migrant Mother” Photograph Became the Face of the Great Depression, illustrated by Sarah Dvojak. She has written the popular Great Idea series, and her work has been nominated for many awards, including numerous Silver Birch Express and Golden Oak awards and the Norma Fleck Award for Canadian Children’s Non-Fiction. She lives in Toronto, Ontario.

MELISSA CASTRILLON has a first class honors degree in illustration and a master’s degree in children’s book illustration from the Cambridge School of Art. She is a freelance illustrator based in Cambridge, England.

• Bank Street College of Education Best Children's Books of the YearCommended 2018
• CCBC Best Books for Kids and TeensCommended 2017
• Cooperative Children's Book Center Best of the YearCommended 2018