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Monarch and Milkweed

Helen Frost

Illustrated by Leonid Gore

Picture Book

Ages 5 to 7

Simon and Schuster, 2008, 1-4169-0085-3

  This is the story of a plant and a butterfly. The plant is Milkweed and the butterfly is Monarch. The lives of these two living things are closed entwined, Monarch needing Milkweed to provide shelter and sustenance for her young.

  As Milkweed flowers and grows in the warm spring sunshine, Monarch sips nectar from the flower of a dandelion. Then Monarch alights on Milkweed and her feet tell her that she has found what she is looking for, “she tastes home.” Milkweed’s flowers dry up and the plant’s seed pods swell. Monarch mates and then she flies back to Milkweed. Carefully Monarch lays one egg on one of Milkweed’s leaves.

  Four days later a tiny caterpillar “shorter than an eyelash” hatches out of the egg and, after it eats its egg, it begins to eat the leaves of the milkweed plant. It continues to eat until it is ready to begin the remarkable transformation from being a caterpillar to being a beautiful monarch butterfly.

  Readers will be stunned when they get their first glimpse of the pages in this book. The artwork, created using acrylics and pastels, is beautiful. The artist, by some magical process, has produced pictures which are softly colored, and at the same time which have an element of texturing which is very unusual. These pictures skillfully compliment the lyrical text which, as the story unfolds, shifts in its focus from the milkweed plant to the monarch butterfly, and then back to the milkweed plant. Back and forth we go, seeing how the insect and the plant are independent of one another and yet at the same time, closely bound.

  An author’s note at the back of the book provides the reader with further information about this special plant/animal relationship.

 

 

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