If I didn't know better, I'd call Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier creative nonfiction but it's really fiction based on fact. She based this novel on a real person, Mary Anning, a fossil hunter in 1800s England. The story she told of this remarkable woman and the remarkable creatures she found was so engaging. I loved it!
Mary Anning was a real person who lived in Lyme Regis, England in the first part of the 1800s. She collected fossils like ammonites and belemnites from the seashore to sell in her family's curiosities shop in town. She discovered the first ichthyosaurus then other "creatures," and she was highly sought after in the scientific community for her "eye"in seeing these remarkable creatures in the sides of cliffs.
Have you read any of Tracy Chevalier's books? she also wrote Girl with a Pearl Earring and Burning Bright (and three other novels). What did you think of them?
Book Read: Remarkable Creatures
Author: Tracy Chevalier
ISBN: 978-0-525-95145-2
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