Firefly Song: Lynn Frierson Faust and the Great Smoky Mountain Discovery

Gr 1-4–This lovely picture book is the true story of Lynn Frierson Faust, a citizen scientist who helped prove that synchronous fireflies exist in both North and South Carolina and in Tennessee, even though scientists at the time believed the species only existed in Asia. Faust grew up spending summers at a remote family cabin in the Great Smoky Mountains. When the cabin and its land became part of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Lynn and her family lost access to the cabin but she never forgot the magic of watching fireflies from its porch. Through her own research, she found out that the synchronous fireflies were quite unusual and set out to prove that what she had witnessed was real. This is a story of persistence and patience as well as the inspiration to explain a natural phenomena. The artwork is beautiful, particularly the images of the fireflies, which are hard to capture and even more difficult to try to explain to someone who’s never seen them.