Hurry and the Monarch

This is a beautiful story, gently told, about the amazing migration of monarch butterflies. It's a lush picture book to be read to a younger child by a parent, ideal for the young reader, and full of facts in the back for adults. A find.

I picked this book up at the local library as I am keenly interested in the monarch migration story-- who wouldn't be? But this story adds a depth to the tale of animal migration. It's about love, loss and letting go. Absolutely beautiful illustrations along with a simple, yet powerful story which leaves the reader with a sense of inner peace about the natural world. And over all, it lends this feeling of how fortunate we are to be alive and living on this planet we call Earth! I will be purchasing many copies of this book to offer as gifts to my friends and family members of all ages.

I found this book in the public library when I was picking books to read with a grandchild. I liked it so much I ordered two copies. I live in Wichita Falls, Texas, which is mentioned in the book as a major stopping spot in the monarch migration to Mexico. Not every year but very often there are thousands of butterflies that cling to my mother's house and seem to drip from the trees near the backyard pond. They are amazing.

Each fall the beautiful orange and black monarch butterflies migrate two thousand miles from Canada to Mexico. The facts about this migration are explained by Antoine O Flatharta in the Afterword to "Hurry and the Monarch," where young readers will learn about how each monarch begins life as a tiny egg on the underside of a milkweed leaf. However, it is the monarchs that are born in early autumn that end up making the long journey to Mexico, where they travel from 50 to 125 miles in a single day until they arrive in the fir forests of Mexico in early November and blanket the forest with millions of orange colored wings. Whereas the usual life span of a butterfly is four to six weeks, the monarchs that journey to Mexico usually live up to eight months and sometimes more. Compare this to the life of a land tortoise, which can live up to 100 years or more. That comparison is apt because in "Hurry and the Monarch" one of the beautiful butterflies makes friends with a tortoise named Hurry. The facts about the migration of the monarchs are certainly interesting, but the story illustrated by the watercolors of Melo So will make a bigger impression on young readers. The story begins when Hurry, who lives in Wichita Falls in the northern part of Texas, finds one October than a monarch butterfly has landed on his back. She is much more interested in him than he is in her, wondering why he does not break out of his shell, grow wings, and fly away (after all, that is what happened to her). Both creatures are affected by the coming cold weather, but while the monarch flys south to warmer lands, the tortoise just sleeps and waits out the winter. Then the monarch joins her comrades and flies south to Mexico. Melo So is able to contrast the orange and black of the monarch butterflies with the green and yellow of the world in which they live their transitory lives. Working with a rather simple palette of colors So creates a series of lovely watercolors bringing Flatharta's story to life. As you might expect in such a tale, the monarch returns one morning in the spring to Hurry's garden on her way back north to Canada. She lays eggs on a milkweed plant and flies away. There is a poignant end to her journey, but the emphasis in the story is now on the newborn caterpillar that Hurry watches grow and then transform into a new monarch. The ending of the story continues the lyrical narrative spun and older readers will better appreciate how Hurry and the new monarch butterfly part ways at the end. Flatharta has a nice sense of subtlety in telling this story, beginning with the wry irony of the names but more importantly in terms of how he involves the readers in the story by leading them to certain things without necessarily telling them outright. This simple story about the life cycle of the monarch butterfly has a nice sense of depth, which lifts it to a higher level as a children's book.