She Made a Monster: How Mary Shelley Created Frankenstein

Gr 3–5—The bicentenary of Frankenstein has generated a lot of attention for the origin story of its author, Mary Godwin Shelley. With this title, Fulton demonstrates the challenges of presenting literary history for younger readers. Sala's illustrations convey the gothic tone of the source material, complete with spooky trees, jagged lightning, and Shelley's famously aquiline profile. Fulton has the harder task of translating Shelley's Romantic ideas of inspiration "like a bolt of lightning" into the rhetoric of empowerment. Although "Mary wants to become a writer," she is lonely, plagued by writer's block, and sidelined by egotistical male poets. Overhearing Lord Byron and Percy Shelley's talk of reanimated corpses, Shelley poses two crucial questions: "Wouldn't it be…more terrifying, to be such a creature" and, after dreaming of a monster, "What did it want from her?" These questions of identification and purpose are crucial, but unresolved in the narrative. Statements like "her mother was right! A woman's writing could be just as important as a man's" feel off-center, because, unlike Frankenstein's creature, this version of Shelley never raises her voice against her oppressors or triumphantly presents her act of defiance. Indeed, readers leave her picking up her pen, before her novel fully comes to life.