HELLO, LITTLE ONE

A monarch butterfly befriends a newly hatched monarch larva and offers it a glimpse into a future with wings.

The narrative is voiced by the caterpillar: “Coming out of my egg, I see… / green.” When a monarch butterfly comes to “sip nectar from a nearby flower” the caterpillar refers to it as Orange. The butterfly tells the caterpillar, “Once, I was just like you on this milkweed plant.” The caterpillar longs to see more than the leaves nearby: “I can’t wait to fly with Orange.” The butterfly tells the caterpillar about what she sees from above: flowers blooming, forest, ocean, a schoolyard. She says that one day the caterpillar will be able to see these things for itself, but the butterfly won’t be there: “I must go. We all must, someday.” Halliday’s bold, frequently full-bleed digital collages have an impressive sense of depth and realistically depict the colors of the insects and flora, but they anthropomorphize by giving large, round, glossy, expressive eyes to both butterfly and larva. The gentle conversations between caterpillar and butterfly reach for a metaphor along with the factual depiction of the monarch’s life cycle, but the result is that both story and science are somewhat weakened. Backmatter briefly describes the life cycle and mentions the annual migration of each season’s last generation.

This introduction to a well-loved butterfly species meets with mixed success.