THE STORY OF A BUTTERFLY

Monarchs get most of the attention—but here the spotlight shifts to the equally wonderful and even more common painted lady.

Aside from a mention that caterpillars transform themselves into “goo” in a chrysalis before emerging as adults, the tone of this portrait of Vanessa cardui stands in stark contrast to that of Rosemary Mosco’s Butterflies Are Pretty…Gross! (2021)—focusing instead on the “magic” of metamorphosis and the insect’s life cycle while following two young visitors through a tour of a butterfly house and then on to the creation of a butterfly garden based, as is proper, on locally native plants. Though Reed doesn’t explain how the species’ populations on both sides of the Atlantic can go through long migratory cycles that take several generations to complete (backmatter merely states that migration is “another wonder of nature”), she adds further facts about them, as well as moths and butterflies in general, at the end. Montoya enhances a pair of appended photos with paintings that highlight his fluttery subject’s lovely wing patterns and feature a mix of children and adult helpers in school and garden. Characters are diverse in skin tone and include a hijab wearer and one young student in a wheelchair. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

An oddly rare introduction to a widely distributed butterfly.