CM Magazine: The Butterflies' Promise.

________________ CM . . . . Volume V Number 20 . . . . June 4, 1999

The Butterflies' Promise.

Julie Ovenell-Carter. Illustrated by Kitty Macaulay.
Willowdale, ON: Annick Press, 1999.
28 pp., cloth & pbk., $15.95 (cl), $6.95 (pbk).
ISBN 1-55037-567-9 (cl), 1-55037-566-0 (pbk).

Preschool-grade 3 / Ages 4-8.
Review by Irene Gordon.

**** /4

excerpt:

Milly's grandpa had a garden bigger than a city block.
Everywhere you looked, tomatoes spilled off trellises
and pumpkins plumped in the sun. There were rose-
bushes and bush beans and bushy little strawberries
always ready with a treat. But the best thing was the
butterflies. Grandpa's flying flowers, Milly called them.

Milly loves to visit her grandfather and help him in his garden. Then, sadly, he has a stroke and must leave his home and garden for a nursing home. His family decides he must continue to have a garden, and so they build raised beds around the nursing home courtyard so that he can garden from his wheelchair. At the end of summer, they harvest his small garden and hold a party for all the residents and their families. The story ends with a great cloud of monarch butterflies gathering in a tree in the courtyard while preparing to fly south for the winter.

The bright water colour illustrations perfectly complement this lyrical, yet realistic, story about aging, the love of family, gardening, and butterflies. The last page of the book contains facts about monarch butterflies and hints on attracting them to your yard.

Highly Recommended.

Irene Gordon of Headingley, MB, is a free-lance writer and former teacher-librarian who spent 14 years working in a junior high school library.

To comment on this title or this review, send mail to cm@umanitoba.ca.

Published by
The Manitoba Library Association
ISSN 1201-9364

TABLE OF CONTENTS FOR THIS ISSUE - JUNE 4, 1999.