The Reading Table—September
In my August post—the first Reading Table post for the Interconnect— I promised “I’ll write about books currently on the Reading Table, including the newest book from Joel Satore, Photo Ark Insects: Butterflies, Bees, and Kindred Creatures. When the pandemic put a stop to traveling, he started photographing insects in his backyard in Nebraska. Stay tuned.”
You'll have to wait a little longer for that. (It will be worth the wait.) Instead, I'm sharing a children's book written by Newbery award-winning children’s author Joyce Sidman about the life of Maria Sibylla Merian—The Girl Who Drew Butterflies: How Maria Merian’s Art Changed Science.
Maria Sibylla Merian was born into a family of publishers and engravers in 1647 in Frankfurt, Germany at a time when the dominant popular belief about the origin of insects was “spontaneous generation” (proposed by Aristotle two thousand years before Maria’s life).
Some said they grew from old things— flies grew from old meat, moths from old wool. Some believed that sunshine shrank drops of dew into eggs, which hatched into maggots. Still others felt that fire as it leapt into the air, produced stinging wasps. When butterflies appeared in spring, people called them “summer birds,” assuming they had flown in from elsewhere.
Maria’s extraordinary curiosity and perseverance changed that. The story follows her life from childhood, featuring images published by her father Matthäus Merian, detailed images of flowers by her stepfather, Jabob Marrel, other contemporary artists of her time, and her revolutionary illustrations of the life cycles of insects and the plants they needed to live.
Why did Maria insist on painting her insects with the plants they favored?... Maybe she was sending a message ahead to the future. Living creatures exist with one another in a delicate balance, she seemed to be saying. The word ecology was not invented until more than 50 years after her death, but once again, Maria was ahead of her time. Many have called her the world's first ecologist.
Author Joyce Sidman, who is known for her children’s poetry books, accompanies the art from the era with her own photographs, from butterfly egg to larva, pupa, adult, with short little poems about each stage that map to Maria’s own growth and development. It’s a lovely touch. She closes out the book with a timeline of Maria’s life.
The Girl Who Drew Butterflies is a book that will take readers deep into the life and times of one of the world’s great naturalists.
Mature Content Alert
This book deals with some mature content. Definitely read it first yourself before giving this to a child or students. Mighty Girl website gives it a 10 to 13 age range. You’ll need to decide for yourself. It covers sensitive topics in the life of Maria including witch burnings in Germany, colonialism and slavery in Surinam where she traveled, abortion (in the context of an herb used by African women to abort so their children would not be born into slavery), and suicide (by enslaved people due to harsh treatment they received).
In doing some research on Maria Sibylla Merian online, I noticed that the London Natural History Museum has a project on Slavery and the natural world documenting how the Museum’s history and collections are connected to the transatlantic slave trade. They have organized 10 chapters as PDFs as part of this project that could be used with a class engaging with this book, or for your own preparation to read and discuss this book with young people.
Here is the London History Museum’s page about Maria Sibylla Merian, featuring many of her illustrations (and her daughter’s) and a stunning portrait of her by stepfather and artist Jacob Marrel.
The full text (Dutch) and illustrations of two of her books De Europische Insecten (The European Insect) and Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium are available online through a partnership between the Smithsonian and the Biodiversity Heritage Library. A Smithsonian spotlight on Maria is here.
Mighty Girl recommends the book Summer Birds: The Butterflies of Maria Merian for four- to eight-year-olds (I haven’t read it). Let me know if you do.
Elsewhere on Substack
I got this note from a reader in response to last week’s post about birds:
Made me think of Jer Thorp’s pod series, Once Upon a Checklist. Have you seen (listened to) it?
From the MDL archives
I am a big fan of Jer Thorpe’s awesome book, Living in Data. I wrote this post in January, 2022, urging people to read it.
I recommend that you read this book. Well, actually, I urge you to read this book to evolve your own consciousness around data, and for the sheer inspiration that Jer brings. Think awe.
A NOTE ABOUT OPTIMAL INTERCONNECT USER EXPERIENCE
I do read a lot of content on my phone. I actually finished the Digital Climate Primer a few weeks ago after I wrote the post, So much more connected. And I did it on my phone, in bed at night. It was a great user experience.
But I don’t write my Substack posts on my phone. I write on my laptop with dual screens, navigating multiple browser windows with multiple tabs (and I do mean multiple).
I thought a lot about my post last week—Giving birds a greater share of my attention—about the fall migration and the BirdCast dashboard. Not only did I write it on my laptop, but I designed it to be read on a computer, not on a phone or tablet. In particular, the walkthrough of BirdCast, beginning with the Dashboard and going through the Weather Surveillance Radar and Bird Migration Primer is going to be a much better experience on a larger screen than a phone, and the links will be easier to work your way through.
But I didn’t mention that. And reflecting, I realized, just like I do, many of you read Substack, whether it’s the email version or in app, on your phones. Many of you may not even have laptops. A phone or tablet might be your primary device. So in the future, I will say when a post is better experienced on a laptop, and if you don’t have your own, you’ll have a good excuse to connect with a friend or family member who does, for a shared exploration.
Thanks for engaging with The Interconnect. I deeply appreciate the growing community here. Be well.