Coco and the Caterpillars

The unnamed young narrator and his pet chicken, Coco, both love the family garden but for quite different reasons. While the boy appreciates learning about its variety of plants and insect life, Coco sees the garden as a source of food, especially food that comes in the form of worms and insects. When the boy discovers a clutch of six butterfly eggs on one of the plants, he wonders what kind of butterfly the eggs will become. However, the boy, aware of Coco’s seemingly insatiable appetite, decides to try to distract the chicken from the eggs by scattering “chicken snacks” on the ground. The black, yellow and white caterpillars that later hatch from the eggs the boy recognizes as being those of Monarch butterflies. Now the boy becomes excited by the prospect of seeing the caterpillars enter the chrysalis stage, but, before that can happen, Coco, who has now spotted the brightly coloured caterpillars, manages to gobble up four of them while the boy is away getting more chicken treats. What poor Coco didn’t know is that the bright colours of the Monarch larvae are to serve as a warning that they are poisonous. In feeding exclusively on milkweed leaves, the larvae ingest poisonous juices from the milkweed plants, and any animal unwise enough to eat a caterpillar Monarch will, like Coco, become ill and suffer severe vomiting. [Note that Valério’s text does not provide the explanation for Coco’s becoming ill.]

Upon the boy’s return with treats in hand, a now tearful boy, recognizing what has happened, must render “medical” assistance to his ill pet while also grieving the loss of the caterpillars. Fortunately for both the boy and a recovering Coco, the chicken missed two larvae which the boy is able to follow into their chrysalis stage before they eventually emerge as a pair of Monarch butterflies. Coco, who had obviously not entirely learned his lesson about equating bright colours with potential illness, does try to eat the two butterflies, but they manage to fly away.

Though the boy tells the main story, Coco also has a speaking role via speech bubbles. For example, when Coco is pursuing an insect, the associated speech bubble reads, “I’ll catch you!’ and, as the chicken is devouring the caterpillars, the bubble says, “Yummy! Yummy! Yummy!”, but, after eating them, its immediate utterance is “Not yummy”. Later, when the boy finds the two surviving larvae and Coco also spots them, the chicken’s response is an emphatic “Not yummy! Not yummy!”

Valério’s collage illustrations are simply outstanding, and they begin and end with the book’s endpapers, the opening one featuring six caterpillars munching on the leaves of a plant, and the closing one highlighting a pair of chrysalises hanging above some chewed-upon leaves. Particularly effective are the spreads that capture Coco’s almost frenzied eating of the four caterpillar and those that show the two Monarchs hatching, their wings not yet inflated, followed by the Monarchs being portrayed in all their colourful glory.

Readers who enjoyed Coco and the Caterpillars could be directed to another related Valério title, My Book of Butterflies (www.cmreviews.ca/node/2434)