The Girl Who Drew Butterflies: How Maria Merian's Art Changed Science by Joyce Sidman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This nonfiction work was written by a poet, and it works beautifully. The reader is given all the details of an amazing 17th century artist and scientist alongside the stages of a butterflies metamorphosis, obviously showing a connection between the two. The art is beautiful, and made more interesting by being original illustrations by the subject and her contemporaries. In addition, I was impressed by the amount of background information of the era, including the the existence of slavery in Suriname and ongoing threat of witch trials in Europe, things that could have easily been glossed over, but impacted Maria Merian and her life, and so were given context in the story.

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