Tracey Fern

Even as a child, Barnum Brown started collecting fossils. This boy from Carbondale, Kansas, grew up to be one of the 20th century’s premier dinosaur hunters. He provided the American Museum of Natural History in NYC with its first tyrannosaurus Rex and more. Illustrations add wit to the informal telling; an author’s note rounds out the presentation.

Ellen Prentiss “was born with saltwater in her veins” whose father taught her to sail and navigate on his trading schooner. When she married a man who also loved the sea, Ellen’s tenacity, her ability to read the sea and dare the win allowed them to sail from New York to San Francisco in 1851 in record-breaking time. A brief note about Ellen includes source notes.

Velma Bronn Johnson, nicknamed Wild Horse Annie, was born in Nevada. In spite of having polio, Annie was able to ride horses again. Later, when she saw hundreds of wild horses killed to make room for cattle, Annie became an activist. She worked to pass the 1971 law protecting mustangs on federal land. Conversational text is accompanied by loose, swirling illustrations to present an overview of one woman’s fight to save a piece of the Wild West.