Hurry and the Monarch

When the beautiful orange Monarch on her fall migration route from Canada to Mexico stops to rest at Wichita Falls, Texas, she makes friends with an old tortoise called Hurry. She tells him, "Maybe one day you'll break out of that shell, grow wings, and fly away," and then she is off again with millions of other Monarchs. In the spring, she stops again at Hurry's garden just long enough to lay her eggs and head north to Canada. Embedded in this lyrical and tender fictional presentation are the fascinating facts about the amazing 2,000-mile migration and the life cycle of butterflies. An afterword provides additional scientific data.“A [Canada-to-Mexico] migrating butterfly provides Hurry, a Texas tortoise, with perspective on the world beyond his garden. ‘Maybe one day, you’ll break out of that shell, grow wings, and fly away,’ the butterfly remarks to Hurry. ‘I doubt it,’ he replies, then contentedly settles down to hibernate. He wakes in the spring to see the same butterfly alight on a milkweed plant depositing an egg, which hatches, grows, and metamorphoses under Hurry’s watchful eye. . . . Together with its informative afterword, this is a particularly attractive, affecting introduction to the wonder of species diversity and the elegant continuum of life.”—Booklist, StarredAntoine Ó Flatharta’s previous children’s book, The Prairie Train, won the Western Writers of America Spur Award. He lives in Dublin, Ireland.

Meilo So’s watercolor illustrations have graced a number of children’s books about nature, including Pale Male: Citizen Hawk of New York City and The Beauty of the Beast: Poems from the Animal Kingdom. He lives in the Shetland Islands, Scotland.