Reading Is Fundamental is celebrating its 45 anniversary, and these fantastic people are sharing the fun with Bridgeport Schools. To start off, Bryant School has been given some beautiful picture books for each classroom teacher in grades 1 through 5, as well as the library. Every book comes with a proposed activity, and we are reading at least one book a week to the end of the school year. There's a lot more to come, but I don't want to spoil any surprises. Currently, my favorite book is this:
It is a brief biography of Maria Sibylla Merian, a 17th century naturalist. Since childhood, Merian was fascinated with butterflies, and she made a career of studying their life cycles, right down to the tiniest details. She created beautiful paintings and published her findings. Her books were quite popular, and key in discrediting the theory of spontaneous generation. She also was brave enough to travel all the way to Surinam to study the insect life of South America, which was a very unusual thing for a woman in late middle age to do.
When I read this book to my students, they were appalled and stunned to find that people- adults no less- once believed that insects and tadpoles came from mud. Moreover, people believed that insects were "beasts of the devil" and that if a caterpillar could turn into a butterfly, then a person could turn into a werewolf. Maria Merian helped put an end to these ideas through simple, studious observation. She was a hero of the scientific method. My students smiled at the conclusion that Maria Merian was just humble enough to let the insects tell their own story.
I loved this book so much I went to the public library to read an adult biography,
Chrysalis: Maria Sibylla Merian and the Secrets of Metamorphosis by Kim Todd. It's a wonderful read.
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