Mary's Monster: Love, Madness, and How Mary Shelley Created Frankenstein

Mary’s Monster: Love, Madness, and How Mary Shelley Created Frankenstein
By Lita Judge
Roaring Brook Press, 2018. 312 pages.

This haunting graphic novel tells the true story behind one of history's most iconic monsters. Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, was only a teenager when she wrote her timeless novel, but her life experience was anything but easy. Mary endured the social shame and isolation that befalls an unwed pregnancy, eloped with the financially and emotionally unstable poet Percy Shelley, watched as her husband had an affair with her step-sister, and lost her children at young ages.

Told in free verse and accompanied by stark black and white watercolors, the harsh reality of Mary Shelley comes to life to give the reader a sense of how Frankenstein’s monster was an extension of herself. The illustrations alone are worth the read for this graphic novel. Stark and macabre, the images perfectly invoke the Gothic Romance era of poetry and novels. The text is also alluring, in that Judge is able to convey so much feeling in just a few lines of text per page.

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