From the creators of the award-winning An Egg Is Quiet, A Seed Is Sleepy, and A Rock Is Lively comes this gorgeous and informative introduction to the world of butterflies. An incredible variety of butterflies are celebrated here in all of their beauty and wonder, from the tiny Arian Small Blue to the grand Queen Alexandra's Birdwing. Perfect for a child's bedroom bookshelf or for the classroom!
Publishers Weekly
This companion to An Egg Is Quiet and A Seed Is Sleepy is as delicate, elegant, and informative as its predecessors. Under headings that echo the book's title ("A butterfly is helpful," "A butterfly is poisonous"), Aston explores the development, habits, migration, and attributes of one of nature's flashier, yet familiar creations. Long's watercolors are precise but enchanting as ever, especially in the "A butterfly is spectacular!" spread, which shows the colorful diversity of more than a dozen specimens, and in another devoted to the migration of monarch butterflies, seen swarming over a quiet desert. A lovely mix of science and wonder. Ages 5–8. (June)
School Library Journal
K-Gr 3—A companion to the equally stylish An Egg Is Quiet (Chronicle, 2006), this lovely combination of elegant watercolors and lyrical text is both eye-catching and informative. Readers follow the creatures from egg to flight as Aston takes them through the process of metamorphosis while describing various behavioral traits. With wing scales "stacked like shingles on a roof," the butterflies come to life. While noting differences between moths and butterflies, the author makes no mention of the former's "fluffier" antennae, and there is no definition for the term "instar" (which appears in an illustration caption). The Monarch migration gets a star turn, along with a veritable litany of names—Diana Fritillary, Ruddy Daggerwing, Painted Jezebel, and Elbowed Pierrot—as worthy of recitation as the dinosaur appellations so beloved of children. A lyrical, colorful, and elegant production.—Patricia Manning, formerly at Eastchester Public Library, NY
From the Publisher
"A lovely mix of science and wonder." - Publishers Weekly Starred Review"[T]his beautiful book... invites 5- to 10-year-olds to enjoy the variety, complexity and sumptuousness of natural things" - The Wall Street Journal"
This lovely combination of elegant watercolors and lyrical text is both eye-catching and informative" - School Library Journal Starred Review"
Similar butterfly albums abound, but none show these most decorative members of the insect clan to better advantage" - Kirkus Reviews
Children's Literature - Barbara L. Talcroft
After bringing young naturalists An Egg Is Quiet and A Seed Is Sleepy (Chronicle, 2005 and 2007), Aston and Long collaborate again to create an even more beautiful book, this time about the elusive winged creatures so enchanting to poets and the rest of us. Readers and listeners will learn why a butterfly has to be patient as it grows from a tiny egg to a caterpillar, eating, shedding its skins, creating a chrysalis that metamorphoses into a butterfly—something entirely different. Aston explains that butterflies are helpful to humans as they pollinate flowers, can be poisonous to predators, and sate their thirst by sipping nectar, minerals, or rotting fruit. They have wings covered with scales (Long shows shiny, powdery bits of blue, rose and white through a microscope) and can be huge (with a wingspan of one foot) or as tiny as a grain of rice. They are definitely not moths—fellow Lepidoptera who fly at night and are about 150 million years older than their relatives. Picturing monarch butterflies as travelers, Long paints tiny orange wisps high above Canadian mountains and resting finally as colorful clumps in Mexico, 3000 miles away. Above all, butterflies are spectacular, proved by Long's detailed watercolor illustrations (reminiscent of antique botanical prints enlarged), with their brilliant blues, yellows, oranges, and blacks. For the curious, each name is carefully lettered near its subject; even the names hint at adventure: Blue Morpho, Malay Lacewing, Moonlight Jewel, Ruddy Daggerwing. This lovely book, well-researched and beautifully produced, will delight butterfly-lovers both young and older, from its front endpapers teeming with jewel-like caterpillars to its back ones fluttering with bright wings a viewer might almost reach out and capture. Reviewer: Barbara L. Talcroft
Kirkus Reviews
Another interwoven flight of poetry, natural history and lovely art from the creators ofAn Egg Is Quiet(2006) andA Seed Is Sleepy(2007).
Beneath hand-scripted headers that sometimes take license with facts but create lyrical overtones ("A butterfly is creative"), Aston offers specific and accurate descriptions of metamorphosis, pollination, camouflage, migration and other butterfly features and functions, along with the differences between butterflies and moths. Imagination-stretching comparisons—"monarchs weigh only as much as a few rose petals," the wingspan of the Arian Small Blue is "about the length of a grain of rice"—lend wings to the body of facts, and though the author avoids direct mention of reproduction or death, a quick closing recapitulation that harks back to the opening page's hatching egg provides an artful hint of life's cyclical pattern. With finely crafted, carefully detailed close-up watercolors, Long depicts dozens of caterpillars and butterflies, each one posed to best advantage, unobtrusively labeled and so lifelike that it's almost a surprise to page back and find them in the same positions.
Similar butterfly albums abound, but none show these most decorative members of the insect clan to better advantage.(Informational picture book. 8-10)
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