Review: The Life Cycle of the Monarch Butterfly

The Life Cycle of the Monarch Butterfly

Written by Betty Brownlie

Publication date: 1992
Publisher: Ashton Scholastic
ISBN: 978-1-86943-983-5

Summary/Back cover:
Did you know that the monarch butterfly can fly only adter the sun has warmed its wings? Or that monarch butterflies can fly great distances - covering 2000 kilometres in two to four days?

Illustrated with magnificent full-colour photographs.

Review:
I was lucky enough to receive this book from Scholastic, and it has been pored over for so many hours. We've been raising our own monarch butterflies for the first time this year, and my 3 year old son's kindy has been raising some as well, so he has learnt a lot about monarchs this summer.

There are so many things to like about this book that it's hard to know where to start - the, quite frankly, beautiful photos show incredible detail of every stage of a monarch's life, from egg to caterpillar, shedding it's skin, becoming a chrysalis, and becoming a butterfly. There's even a photo showing the end of a butterfly's life, when it's eaten by a praying mantis.

The books is not written as a story book (it's non-fiction), but more in what I call an encyclopaedia-style, but aimed at children. The language used is simple but accurate, and difficult terms are well explained. There is an explanation about why a swan plant has that name, along with a picture of the swan (how many adults don't know what that looks like?)

This is also a New Zealand book, which I particularly like, as most books on monarchs I have found are US-based and talk about butterflies migrating to Mexico for the winter - most of our butterflies stay in NZ (some go to Australia), and apparently there are a few swarms of butterflies in our own neighbourhood over winter, so we'll be watching out for those.

As a result of this book, and from raising our own butterflies, my 3 year old can tell me every stage of the monarch's life, knows the difference between a male and female butterfly, and understands all the different body parts of a caterpillar and butterfly.

We took this book to kindy, as my son wanted to show his head teacher - she certainly gave it the teacher-approval rating, and I think she's planning on getting a copy for the kindy. It's definitely a book that is useful to school children doing a project on monarchs, as it has pretty much all the information they would need. And, although it's not a reading book, it's become bedtime reading in our house - most 3 year old boys are into dinosaurs, but mine's well and truly into monarch butterflies, and is very eagerly looking after the 7 caterpillars we currently have on our windowsill in the lounge.

My rating: A very enthusiastic 5 out of 5 - this is the best book I've seen on monarchs, and I'm very keen to get my hands on the rest of the 'Life Cycle' series - frog, kiwi, pukeko, royal albatross and tuatara.

Review written by Bronwyn