My Mastodon

Charles Willson Peale was an important 18th-century portraitist and also the proprietor of America’s first natural history museum, in Philadelphia. Lowell (Sparky & Spike) imagines a voice for Peale’s young daughter Sybilla, who helps her father and brothers as they reassemble a mastodon skeleton for display. “My favorite place is beneath his bones,” she says, as Italian artist Marinoni paints her taking tea with a doll underneath it. When a request comes to put the mastodon on temporary exhibit in London, Sybilla rebels. Her father and older brother Rembrandt acquiesce; their gentle approach allows Sybilla to reconsider. She consults the mastodon: “My mastodon says yes, in his own quiet way.” Architecturally detailed, theatrically lit illustrations by Marinoni set the swoops and curves of the fossilized mastodon against period dress and household furnishings. Nurtured by intelligent, eccentric family members and permitted familiarity with priceless scientific curiosities, Sybilla has an ideal Enlightenment-era childhood. An author’s note provides historical context. Ages 8–up. [em](Apr.) [/em]