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Check It Out Now on NetGalley!
Preschool teachers, day camp counselors, and other care providers, take note! This week on NetGalley you can get a sneak peek at a picture book from Floris Books that can become a popular end-of-day choice. ONCE UPON A PICKUP TIME, written by Johanna Lindemann, illustrated by by Mareike Ammersken, and translated from German by by Christian Maclean, we meet Ben who is that “last kid” every day care provider knows: impatient, disappointed, eager to let his friends know that his dad has been delayed by really important stuff. Now all the children want to stay later at pickup time to hear Ben’s amazing tale…. Download it this week!
Read It Now: Our Latest Article
- Butterflies Need Safety, Too
This is one in our Double Scoop Sundae series featuring a pair of thematically-related books and ideas for teachers and library program developers seeking ways to extend reading from them.
Interior illustration from MY BUTTERFLY SECRET Butterflies inspire people all over the globe with their silent, beautiful, often iridescent wings. They also serve as reminders of our own and nature’s fragility: they appear, fill us with a moment of wonder, fly away, sometimes leaving a fallen wing, or a comrade for us to find later. They come in every color, patterns suited to hide within various environments, and have captured the interests of artists as well as scientists—and children and adults who simply cross paths with them as they flutter through the air.
Two recent picture books bring young readers aspects of butterfly life and human interactions with their lovely fluttering courses. Each one, like the butterfly itself, leaves behind much to ponder and discuss even with the very young.
MY BUTTERFLY SECRET: The Butterfly Catchers of Indonesia by Mahesh Pathirathna, illustrated by Evi Shelvia, and published by Creston Books, brings together the author’s knowledge of how the butterfly’s fragile ecosystem and human needs can both complement and conflict with the illustrator’s soft palette and skill with conveying a wide range of emotions in both faces and postures. Indeed, the story has two levels, one more suitable to kids around seven to nine, while the more obvious one can stir much younger children as well. In that more broadly accessible plotline, a father shares with his young son the need to keep the butterfly sanctuary at the family’s home a secret in order to keep the delicate creatures safe. The father then must go far from home to work and the boy’s mother has a new baby. The boy shares the secret sanctuary with his sister but then its presence becomes more widely known when a visitor to the family’s home offers a lot of money for one of the butterfly specimen’s they have as a decoration. In time, many people learn of the butterfly garden and, although they pay the family in turn for allowing access to capturing their own delicate beauties, the garden becomes depleted. The boy, with adult help, determines to salvage it as a butterfly safety zone and manages to do so with the help of his village.
Children who have reached the age when they are interested in fairness and have the capacity to consider conflicts between holding a secret and meeting basic needs for life can find much to discuss in this story beyond the inspirational beauty and the needs of the butterflies. There are economic pressures brought to the fore here in a manner that third and fourth graders can grasp: the family, with new baby but with currently absent breadwinner, has needs that can be satisfied by allowing others, for a price to know the secret of the sanctuary’s presence. And there are real aesthetic and cultural needs as well: if the butterfly garden is depleted, how will the baby ever know of the butterflies’ beauty? None of this deeper thread is presented in a didactic or moralizing way. Like the butterfly, the dilemma is a quick yet substantial presence, a wonder that calls out for consideration and presence in the moment.
Children who have reached the age when they are interested in fairness and have the capacity to consider conflicts between holding a secret and meeting basic needs for life can find much to discuss in this story beyond the inspirational beauty and the needs of the butterflies. There are economic pressures brought to the fore here in a manner that third and fourth graders can grasp: the family, with new baby but with currently absent breadwinner, has needs that can be satisfied by allowing others, for a price to know the secret of the sanctuary’s presence. And there are real aesthetic and cultural needs as well: if the butterfly garden is depleted, how will the baby ever know of the butterflies’ beauty? None of this deeper thread is presented in a didactic or moralizing way. Like the butterfly, the dilemma is a quick yet substantial presence, a wonder that calls out for consideration and presence in the moment.
LOOK TO THE SKIES: The Magical Migration of the Monarch Butterfly by Nicola Edwards, illustrated by Hannah Tolson, published by Tiger Tales, gives preschoolers the opportunity to learn about a specific type of butterfly known for its lengthy and annual migration that brings lovely orange swarms to populations across the Americas. In communities regularly visited on this migration route, kids may well have seen and wondered at this passage of silent color in the skies or settled briefly on park benches and in trees. For those who live away from the Monarchs’ flight paths, this picture book, with its die-cut butterflies throughout, offers a way to visit the phenomenon. Moving through the North American seasons, in both rural and urban landscapes peopled by diverse and usually smiling people, we learn about Monarchs’ inborn flight plan, diet, and the environmental threats we need to keep befalling them. The swarming nature in the sky and on trees is clearly depicted, the palette here bright and the pictures filled with both color contrasts and a wide variety of patterns made by kites, farmland, and other places and activities over and through which the Monarchs pass.
Going Beyond the Book
Together this pair of picture books offer both aspects of butterflies’ delicate environmental needs and the gentle beauty their presence offers humans. There are many activities that can extend a child’s or a group of children’s appreciation of one or both of these themes. Here are just two.
Take a Butterfly Walk—After You Prepare Kids for It
Walking (and sitting, crouching, or just standing looking up) in a butterfly-rich environment, as we saw in MY BUTTERFLY SECRET, takes awareness and decorousness that is not a natural part of many small children’s behavior. So help your kids practice how to enjoy a butterfly sanctuary keeping the butterflies safe and their young observers thrilled by what they can see on the visit.
Where will you be visiting? If there is a community garden with a butterfly sanctuary within it, this can be the obvious choice. Other possibilities are to find a neighbor who maintains one and is willing to let your kids, well-prepared, share it for a visit. If you are lucky enough to live in the Monarchs’ migration path, identify a customary landing space they may use locally, such as a park or a field.
Before the visit (and after reading these books with the children), take progressively quieter walks outdoors. Start in the classroom or the program room and simply walk together around it as silently as the group can manage. Then decorate the walls of the room with live sized butterfly cutouts (Be sure to keep the cutouts to natural scale in order to manage child expectations and to represent authenticity) and do the walk again, reminding everyone not to touch the “butterflies.”
Next, move the group outdoors and take a walk around the playground or the block—with no talking. Practice being “butterfly quiet.”
Expect these practice sessions, each brief in itself, to unfold over at least a week, depending on the age and level of exuberance in the prospective butterfly sanctuary visitors.
Now you’re ready to visit! The butterflies (and your sanctuary host) will appreciate your group’s “butterfly manners.”
Map the Migrations
We learned about Monarch butterfly migration and there is a rough map in the back of LOOK TO THE SKIES to help us locate some of their path across North America. Let’s fill that in more completely with a big map showing countries and major states, provinces, and cities. Can you find where you will most likely see the migration of this particular butterfly? What time of year will you see them pass (or even land)? Start with Migration Watch to see more clearly the butterflies’ likely path on a more detailed map. Now fill in more communities on that map with other, more detailed maps you can find in North American atlas. How close do you live to the migration route?
You already know that lots of kinds of birds migrate, too. Choose your favorite and map their paths on the same migration map after you consult this Avian Superhighways source. How closely do they come to the Monarchs’ path? Would they pass at the same times of year?