Lita Judge on Mary’s Monster: Love, Madness, and How Mary Shelley Created Frankenstein by Kelly Bull

This has been a tough week or so for writers that are connected to Young Adult Literature. First, Julius Lester died and as I prepped this guest post last night, I found out that Ursula Le Guin has passed on as well. You can probably expect to see some posts about one or both of these authors in the future. I have been working on a chapter about Julius Lester for several weeks now. His fiction is fantastic and it has been interesting to look into the journey  of his life. 

This week the guest contributor, Kelly Bull, introduces us to author and Illustrator Lita Judge who has created book that looks at Mary Shelly and her creation, Frankenstein. I am thrilled that Kelly wanted to share her serendipitous meeting with Lita on the way to the NCTE conference. 

Did you know that author Mary Shelley grew up in poverty next to prison gallows and slaughter houses, was mistreated by a cruel stepmother, and became a teen runaway at 16?  Pregnant and unable to go home, Mary Shelley fought against societal norms and began writing her novel about Frankenstein’s monster when she was only 19 years old.

THIS is the backstory that would have captivated me as a high school student required to read  The Modern Prometheus (aka Frankenstein).  THIS is the compelling story uncovered by author Lita Judge in her new YA book, Mary’s Monster: Love, Madness, and How Mary Shelley Created Frankenstein.  Reading Mary’s Monster was like being submerged in 19th century England and France, experiencing jealousy, pain, commitment, and compassion firsthand through Mary Shelley’s eyes.
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And yet, Mary’s Monster is a book I would not have known about except for a chance meeting on an airplane to St. Louis. One of the very best things about attending NCTE is meeting new people, and I happened to be sitting across from author Lita Judge while I was scrolling through NCTE’s convention app on my phone. Lita noticed the bright green screen with NCTE’s logo, and we struck up a conversation. I cannot say enough good things about Lita Judge: so much talent rolled into one caring, thoughtful person.  

​Lita is a researcher, traveler, writer, artist, and painter. Her book, Mary’s Monster, will transform your thinking. She graciously shared her process in creating her artwork, as noted below.  I encourage you to buy three copies of her new book: one to keep, one to give to a dear friend, and one for your own classroom library.

On Beginning a Project

“Often art comes before words to me. I usually have a mental image of the story before I find the right words, so I constantly draw small, loose sketches that fill large bulletin boards that serve as story boards as I block in a book.”

As I am creating these rough sketches, I am also doing character studies of the main characters of the book, getting a sense of their appearance, but also finding specific gestures and details that fully describe their personalities. Mary and the other main characters in this book all had portraits painted of them (only one) but it gave me the information I needed on what they looked like.

​As I begin writing, these images are the mental inspirations to the poems. Once the poems are written, I revise many of the sketches to fit the poems. I continue to develop the sketches more fully, experimenting with style and technique which I think best convey this story. I also hired models to take the poses I planned to draw in final illustrations. 

But I also wanted to find a way to separate the realistic world in which Mary lived in with the interior imaginative world of her own mind. To depict the interior workings of her imagination I experimented with techniques that would set those illustrations apart. In the end I came up with digital distortions and layering to depict her imagination. 

Kelly Bull is an Associate Professor, at Notre Dame of Maryland University. She can  be contacted at: kbull@ndm.edu