My Mastodon

Inspired by the 19th-century lives of artist and scientist Charles Willson Peale's family, this is a tale of a girl and her favorite companion--a fossilized mastodon!

Sybilla Peale lives in an unconventional home: one of the first natural history museums in America. Her family shares their space with all sorts of intriguing flora and fauna collected from around the world, but young Sybilla is most taken with an enormous mastodon skeleton that her father unearthed on a recent expedition. When her older brother, Rembrandt, announces his plan to take the mastodon to London, she is heartbroken, but when he relents, her elation dissolves in the face of his disappointment, and she gives the trip her blessing.

It’s a sweet and remarkable story, with Marinoni’s exquisite illustrations inviting the reader directly into the Peales’ museum-home, a world of taxidermic animals and towering skeletons.