BINKLE'S TIME TO FLY

A disabled butterfly’s dreams come true.

Through his time as an egg and caterpillar and then waiting inside a cocoon, Binkle anticipates becoming a butterfly “with big and beautiful wings.” But when he cracks the cocoon and emerges, his wings aren’t what he expected. They’re “weak and pale, silvery, wispy, and unfinished.” Binkle’s “sorrow and disappointed dreams” derive from his wings’ lack of both function—they won’t let him fly—and decoration—they have “holes instead of color.” In a plot straddling the line between magical-disability cure and an insect version of a story about assistive technology, silkworms and spiders weave new thread into his wings, giving Binkle the power of flight; bees “inject” his wings with colors (how?). Binkle says he’ll always be “different” from other butterflies, but there’s no discernible difference aside from uneven coloration post-transformation. Binkle and his pals have expressive, mildly cartoony faces. Rabei textures her backgrounds, leaves, and nondisabled butterfly wings by leaving gaps in the fill, an intentional style that unfortunately mutes the visual difference between Binkle’s original flimsy, hole-filled wings and everything else (including healthy wings). Collins’ author’s note explains her own daughter’s excruciatingly painful and disabling condition; unlike her daughter, Binkle isn’t in pain, and his disability has no (named) material consequences. Young readers will skip the note anyway—which is just as well, because it romanticizes sick children and their “positive spirit.”

For an audience seeking a disappearing-disability arc.