It's Maria's Mutts and Stuff.
What a great idea.
On iHeartRadio, welcome to Maria's Mutts and Stuff and with me. Well, first of all, it's a thrill for me because she's a returning guest. She's also a friend Michelle C. Hollow and her book The Adventures of Mary Anning Jurassic Girl. So Michelle, welcome back. I know it was. I had to look it up. The last time we spoke on Marias MutS and Stuff was October of twenty twenty one. Wow, long time, yep, long time. So for my listeners who I know, people who listen to Maria's MutS and Stuff
and they pay attention. You're a writer and you're an editor, and you know you're right about the climate and pats and social justice and health and Jurassic Girl. I really enjoyed this book. It's and I know it's it's aimed at you know, like middle school. Now I won't say children, but like you know, preteen age? Is that correct?
It is? But it's for anybody. I just believe that pick up a book and read it. It could be I just did a story for Next Avenue on I gave my mom she has early dementia. Okay, and she just turned ninety three, thank you.
Oh God, bless her.
Wow that's nice.
Yeah yeah, yep. And she for her birthday I got her a book that it's a picture book and she she used to be a reading teacher and she was a fifth grade teacher. Wow, and kids and adults. You know, we think picture books kids, No, not just for kids. She was able to read this, and she read. After she read it, she told me exactly what happened in
the book. It was fascinating, wonderful. So I did a story on this, and it's doctors have said that it's easier to read a book with pictures or newspaper or something with ads or photographs on the page because it breaks up the words when you're open up a book. Yeah, and there's like all these words and no art. It's hard for some brains to comprehend.
But wow.
So you know we're really big on just I mean, I grew up in a house where it was books, books.
Yeah. Yeah, no, it's great. And of course you grew up to be a writer, which is wonderful. So let's talk about Jurassic Girl. What made you decide to write this book. I mean, I'll just for the person who hasn't picked up the book yet. It's basically about a twelve year old girl, Mary Anning, and she it's based on a true story. She was a fossil hunter, but back in the early eighteen hundreds, which I found to be so fascinating because you know why, she's a girl.
And so let's talk about, like, what made you decide to write this book.
Well, I write a lot about people that do incredible things, and I love talking to people. That's the best part of my job is the research. I love researching stories and I love talking to people and finding out, well, why do you do this? Why are you helping animals or people like why? And a few readers told me
about Mary Anning. I did not know who she was, and her story really hit home because I also belong to the Facebook group group for science writers, and unfortunately, women in the scientific community don't always get credit for of.
Course, don't get me started on that, but I yes, I understand, uh huh, yes.
And yesterday I actually I gave a talk to a bunch of fourth graders in my community and the kids were so bright and so wonderful and a lot of girls were telling me they want to be palaeontologists.
Love it.
Few girls came up to me and they were like girl power and I'm.
Like, okay, yes, I'll take that exactly, yes, yes.
And the fact that you know back in the early eighteen hundreds, well when Mary found this, she was twelve years old. She found an Atheosaurus, which was she found it in two parts where she found the head and then the body. And this is over seventeen feet long. But if you look at the Jurassic Coast where she grew up, and this was all underwater. When the asteroid hit Earth sixty five million years ago, everything was underwater. The dinosaurs died out, but some did survive, and especially
if they swam and they lived underwater. And the Asiosaurus is a reptilian. It is reptilian. The whole idea that she discovered this and the men which were all the scientific community there, the geology of the London Geology Geological Society, said no, she didn't get credit for this. Actually, the man she sold the fossil to was written up in the scientific journal for discovering this, and she was like, nope, I am going to pribe that I did this and how she did that, and she had a great dad.
Her dad loved taking her out to fossil hunt, and from my research, I really got the feeling her dad was a cabinet maker, and I don't think he enjoyed his work as much as if he could. He would be out on the beach every day, fossil hunting rain or shine. And he took Mary as soon as she started walking with him, and Mary's mother was protective. I believe there were like ten or eleven siblings, but none of most only one other survived. Back then, you know,
we didn't have vaccines. I don't know we could go into.
That, but we didn't, right of course, it was the early eighteen hundreds. It's yeah, exactly because I was actually when I was reading it, and I as I read the book, of course and loved it, and I was like, wow, she came from a huge family. And then I realized, like, oh no, back then, you know, people had a lot of kids, but really not that many survived. You know, you kind of get into the brain of what we have today, and it's very different.
M And also back then, being on the seaside, was it's not like this Calm Beach. Look, I grew up in New York, and we're not terribly wonderful in the city compared to like if you go to the Caribbean or something. Of course, all right, and it just she had to contend with falling rocks from the cliffs, from tides that can you know, the waves can just pull
her in and that did happen a few times. And then think about what she wore back then, women of course didn't wear pants, right, they had boots, but they had she had a long dress. And climbing the cliff.
Yes, I can't imagine, right, No.
No, Like everything she did was just amazing to me, and I really grew to adore her.
I meant, really.
Admire her greatly. And her mom, as I said, was over overprotective. Her dad would have given her Mary his tools, like the sharp knives and such to find, like if she found a fossil, often it was buried, it was covered in stone and she would have to chip away at that. He would have given it those tools to her before she was five, if her mind would have allowed it. Sure, yeah, yeah, understand that too, Yeah, no, for sure.
I mean it's almost I feel like if if she were in our time when you when we were growing up, she would be considered a tomboy, remember that that phrase, right, Because she also had an older brother, So I feel like between her dad and her older brother, you know, she was also very brave and she wasn't you know, and I mean, I hate to say, but she wasn't like a dainty girl because she was just very interested in doing stuff just for the sake, you know, I
want to discover this stuff and I want to go digging. So she definitely was almost like a Rosie the Riveter before Rosie was ever born.
You know. Well, I like the fact that it didn't bother her that she had dirt in her fingernails of course, collected dirt in her boots and such. You know, when I was a kid, I was very lucky. I grew up in the Bronx. My mom had enrolled me in zoology classes at the Bronx Chological Society. Fun yeah, yeah, yeah no, because when I was very little, I either wanted to be a writer or a veterinarian. Those two nice. Yeah,
yeah yeah. So I took zoology classes at the zoo and after each session, the zoologists would come out with an animal, and we got to handle them, we got to go. I mean it was just small, yeah, but I mean I didn't care. How if I came home and there was dirt under my fingernails, it was fine, exactly.
Yeah, and that's what Mary was like.
Yeah, yeah, I could kind of relate to that. And I mean it was hard. She didn't have a lot of friends because girls didn't.
Do that, right, right, she was very different.
Yeah, right. And then when she found what she discovered, no one had ever seen this before. This was at a time when extinction was just starting to become an idea. And I mean, just imagine you discover something that no one's ever seen before. How do you describe it? What is it? And the whole idea of you know, a lot of people thought crocodile. It had all these teeth, but it wasn't a crocodile, and they figured it out it was an etheosaurus.
But which is why that's like a fish lizard? Is that correct?
Yes?
Yeah, fish lizard? Right for those who are like, wait, what is that? Because I didn't know what it was either. I mean obviously I learned reading the book, but and then I looked up that of course, I mean they're now extinct and they probably have been for a long time, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, but.
I mean extinction didn't happen. I mean, well it did, but in people's minds, and a lot of it came from religion, Like God wouldn't have created something that died out right, right, But she believed and she even she went to Sunday School and her priests used to be was a fossil hunter. Oh, they believe, they believe that science and religion could coexist, which is a nice thought.
It's a nice thought. Yeah, yeah, I agree with that. You know it can't exist, yes, yes, so yeah, it's a fascinating story. I mean, how long did it take you to do all this research? And how was it finding this research? Just because it was something that you know, we didn't learn about her in school and you know it was so long ago.
That was an issue for me. When I do a story, it's about somebody who's done some thing to day or lifetime that is alive and I can actually call that person, I can meet with that person. I can find out how did you do this? I could ask questions and get responses this. You know, I don't have a time machine. I couldn't go back and interview Mary. So I actually found a book. It's called The Fossil Hunter by Shelley Emling.
It's a biography and she did research and I found out she contacted the lime Regis Museum, which is where Mary grew up, in the town of lime Regis, and last year they Lime Regius Museum developed a Mary Anning Wing. Yeah. So there are researchers there and I sent them a lot of questions. I was like, can you answer this and this and this? And they was very patient and I got all the information I needed. And I also
looked online. There is some stuff, some stories about her, but it's pretty brief, and a lot of them are pretty repetitious about this young twelve year old that found something. But to get to learn about her background, her family, what Lime Regis was like. And then I got really lucky because I couldn't and I was trying to picture what the cliffs and the seaside look like. I'm thinking, again, New York are okay, the Caribbean, but it's still flat
and such. This is not at all like this. It's huge. It's really really huge. And a cousin of mine that I'm close to put me in touch with another cousin who lives in London, and she went there it's about a three hour drive, and took pictures and sent me a picture of the Oh perfect.
Yeah, yeah, and I'm sure.
Yes, there's a picture. In the picture, there's someone there wearing a bright blue sweater forst just to show the scale. But he's like a dot.
Wow.
Yeah, it's so. I mean, the cliffs are high, huh, the beach is just it's it is really finding that needle in a haystack and learning about the difference between a fossil and a real rock, just the whole idea. And I had to do a lot of research. I did a lot of you know, when I first put this together, I thought, I'm just going to focus on age twelve. And in the back of the book, I have her other accomplishments.
Which I loved. I loved the like, oh, well, what happened to her? You know, it's a real story. What happened Michelle? And you told us well?
And I opened with the book. I mean, being a journalist, if I'm interviewing anybody, I want to check and double check, of course, and make sure everything's right. I couldn't do that in this so my intro, which is like a page, I explained that I made up all the dialogue. Beach.
I figured that, yeah, of course, because how would you know. I mean, it's not like they even had, you know, a cassette deck back then. Yeah, there will be no record of that. But you know what, the dialogue was believable, especially you know, between her and her brother and and her mom being protective and her dad being like, oh you know, this is my girl, come, and you know it was it was believable.
And her brother was also important.
Yeah, very important to that story. Yeah, yeah, no.
And if you read any of Dickens and about how child labor law, well no, no child labor laws, right, children were treated back in the day. And Joseph, her brother, was very lucky that he worked. He was upholstery like an apprentice, right, apprentice, right exactly, thank you.
Sure he.
Was lucky to work there, and not like in a big city like in London, because in London, kids ten years old stood at the station, at their stations, making whatever it was they were making in the factories for twelve hours a day. That was not unusual. He had gruel and you know, they had like a few minutes to eat that and then right and if they made a mistake, they can get whipped or you know, shard. And you know, it was pretty awful, all right. It sounded like Joseph's boss was Cone was.
A decent man. Yes, absolutely, it did sound like that he was. He was like, Joseph was lucky to get that job, but he knew how lucky he was. Yeah, I agree, that's I mean, that's what I got out of it as well.
Good. Yeah, and then yeah, no, and his and Mary, like Joseph of course contributed to the household. And Mary also, I mean the tourists from London and other cities would come and she'd sell the fossils that she found. Them were ammonites, which were small and I had since learned that they range in size from as small as a belly button to like a bicycle tire.
Oh really, okay, wow, I would never think that, but okay, yeah, but.
It's telepods that you know, like squid and octopus remains so embedded into these stones, into the you know, the right it's and I mean there's just so much and doing the research and talking about this to kids, and maybe I said, yesterday, I was at a school, and I mean, there's a new stegosaurus right now at the museum, American Museum in Natural.
History, So I saw that.
Yeah, yeah, And I was looking at YouTube and there was a paleontologist who was interviewed and they were talking about how a lot of the fossils the dinosaurs that we see are not complete because you know, when the asteroid hit and bones were scattered, it wasn't like it was just buried in one spot. So a lot of the dinosaurs skeletons that we see are you know, a percentage of dinosaur bones and then a percentage of copied materials.
Right look like bones.
So I mean I find that also fascinating.
It is, and it is.
Yeah, And just talking to palaeontologists, I mean I'm going a little off, you know, on tangent here. But this paleontologist I interviewed for a story about taking your kids on a on a fossil dig. She was saying when she was little, like all kids go through this this dinosaur phase they do yeah, yeah, yeah, And I mean and like they know every name and yeah, and then
they forget Yeah. But she was telling me. You know, she went through that phase and then you know it's like, Okay, what am I going to do when I grow up? And she's studying other things, and there was an event that she went to with dinosaurs and she said, I'm going to be a paleontologist. And she said to me, my worst experience, my worst day on the job was I'm out in Montana in this big field and there
starts to hail. It's cold, right, she covers herself with a tarp and she finds these enormous dinosaur bones and she's like, oh, this is her words. Oh dang, how in the world am I going to carry this? Right?
That's her worst day worst right?
Yeah, she marked the area and they came back with help.
And tools, and now it's fascinating.
Frans supported, Yeah, it is. It is.
It's really fascinating, you know, and probably I mean obviously to them, they just like Mary in the book, they look at something and they know, well, it's a fossil, that's a dinosaur bone, which to us, you know what, we don't know what that is, just could be a rock, you know, So it's really uh, you know, we appreciate them, and it's just I just found the book so fascinating, and it was an easy read and an easy meaning that you like the characters and you want to see
what happens. Was Elizabeth or a true a real person of Mary's friend? She was oh interesting because that was kind of cool too that she had another like another girl who was a little bit older, but another girl who was also interested.
And I think that's why they connected. It's like all these other girls are like, well, who are you going to marry?
And we're right?
They were right and right. So here was this person she meets on the beach who's fossil hunting and like, what are you doing here? Because some days Mary had the beach to herself. I mean occasionally there were people fishing for dinner, you know, but they weren't fossil hunting. And here's this other woman fossil hunting, and so they became friends. Elizabeth had come from a wealth, wealthy family.
Her parents had passed, but her brother, he was a lawyer, and he knew a lot of people in the London geelo society, so she knew a lot of people there too, and she and her two sisters were living They were living on the top of the Hill of the Cliffs in a very nice area and they had library and she she was pretty, as I said, well to do yeah, but she and Mary had the fossils.
Right in common. Yeah, and they were like really close friends. And so I don't know why it's going to sound crazy, but I'm so happy to know that Elizabeth is real because there was something also, you know, it shows you again, It's like that was a slice of true friends. Don't care if one is rich one is poor, you know what the other person looks like, or does you know?
Friendship is friendship? And I don't. I don't even know if you realize that you showed a slice of what true friendship is because it's based on nothing just having stuff in common.
Mm hmmmm. And there was an age difference, there was a class difference.
Elizabeth, like you said, came from a well to do family, but you know, Mary took her over to her house for dinner and didn't care, and Elizabeth didn't care. So there was also that whole thing too, which I was like, yay, we need a book like this right now, you know. So yeah, I really enjoyed it. I really did well.
Thank you, thank you. I'm so thrilled. I'm really real.
Yeah, no, it was great. So well, the question I always have and I know that you know, this is a recent project and it took a lot for you to do this book, especially, like you said, it's not like you could call a relative or someone to speak for Mary. Besides, I know you you're always writing articles and interviewing people. Do you have another book that you might be thinking about or that you were toying with?
You do?
Okay? Can you talk? Can you hint about it?
I can't. Yeah, I can. Actually, before I studied, you know, and immersed myself and Mary Annie there, I wanted to do a story about Study and I'm guessing you know Study is dog.
Yes, yes, he.
Was the First World War One service, Yes, and yeah. And before I did all this Mary Anning research, Mary Anning was easier in the sense that I had people to talk to as far as well. It was mainly emails through the the Lime Regis researchers in England. But I started putting something together and Study and I want to go back and and rework that good. I didn't know how to write a based on a true story without make, you know, with making up stuff I don't
want to make up. You know, everything Stubby did was pretty amazing. You know, he came from Connecticut, found on an army base, and I believe that the the military, the person in the army, Robert Conroy, when he found Stubby, I mean it was he was instrumental in training this dog. He found him as the puppy. And I've done stories for different websites about service people and their dogs, and every person in the military has said to me, oh, it's not me, it's the dog, and it's like, no,
I truly truly believe it's them too. They are, of course none of it. Yes, And I think you do know that I love animals, of.
Course you do.
That's what I think. How we became friends in the first place. Annection as always, Yes, So I'm excited.
Yeah, yeah. So I've got to go to the it's like the American History museums in the Smithsonian and DC and I got to read through Robert Conroy's Roy's scrap book and there's a lot of news articles and such and he uh like the articles. You know, newspaper articles unfortunately aren't always one hundred percent correct, right, kind of the same type of article for different publications. They had Stubby as a male dog, which he was, and one had Stubby as a female dog, which is not true.
So it was like looking through this looking through his notes and letters and learning about World War One because I really, honestly did not know much about it. And this dog was awarded medals from three US presidents.
Right, I do remember that.
Yeah, yeah, he saved the whole troop from a guess attack because their sense of.
Smell is sure, it's so amazing.
Yeah.
Yeah, Well, so that's your next project, which, of course we'll have to talk about when that is done.
Well, thank you, of course, you know it's still new and.
Okay, well thanks for sharing it. Yeah, well, but in the meantime, The Adventures of Mary Anning Jurassic Girl by michelse Hollow. Michelle, where can my listeners get your book?
Any bookstore? Go to your bookstore if they don't have it. I was actually thrilled. I went to the bookstore in the next town and they had it. Oh nice, Yeah it was. It was a big thrill.
No, that is a thrill. Did you take a picture of that book? Oh you did, good girl?
If like it's fair, it is, yes, yes, and I tell people if you do not have a local bookstore that you can go to or Barnes and Noble bookshop dot org. I'm not getting any money from them for this, but bookshop dot org is an online service where a percent of the sale and it's still the cover price of the books. It's not like they're charging you more. A percent goes to the local bookstores where the book is right.
Yes, you know, I will talk to other authors and they've told me to bookshop dot org. I've heard that before, so yeah.
So that's great.
Yeah, you could get it out of Amazon, and everyone says, well, I should talk about it on Amazon. Talk of Amazon, because you know it's good to get a good Amazon review. But I do like bookshop dot org and I like supporting the.
Local life of course. Yes, no, that's then it's.
Yeah, and you could ask your local library. I know it's in my local library, so that is good, and so it's pretty much anywhere.
Well that's good though, Well, that's good. And I'm sure whoever is listening to this right now will want to read it because you know, it's it's fascinating just because yes, it's girl power, but she's twelve years old. It's a true story. It's way before any of our time, early eighteen hundreds. So it's just it's interesting in so many different ways. So thank you for sharing it with us, thank you for talking about it, and thank you for writing it, because you know, we girl power. It's true.
I mean, we need you know, no offense. Guys, you know we love you, but you know it's I'm a mom to two boys exactly, so yes.
I love boys. But it was interesting seeing the girls because I'm new to doing this whole speaking to her about the book, to hear the girls talk about, you know, like how did you find her? And this is so good for us. And then today and that Science check online people were women were complaining about the lack of women in scientific journals and they do get in occasionally, but it is harder and they don't always get credit.
And correct and this is a perfect example. And yeah, yeah, your book was exactly that she didn't get credit.
So so thank you.
Yeah, so you know, thank you for writing this and thank you for talking about it. Jurassic Girl The Adventures of Mary Anning from Michelle se Hollow and Michelle, we will talk when your next book is done and we'll talk again.
So thank you, okay, and I will listen to you, which I always do.
You're the best. M sure. Never been a rader operator. And this bot see a Raider varmigator