Customer Reviews

An Extraordinary Life: The Story of a Monarch Butterfly

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This book first captures your attention with all the bright butterflies featured on the front cover. Then, you are told of a butterfly that has traveled for a month, living a full life, enjoying nature's beauty, and then dies. Although, she hatched over four hundred eggs and one is about to hatch. Soon, there is a catepillar and then, a butterfly, and then the cycle of life starts all over again. The monarch butterfly, called Danaus, from the Danaidae family of butterflies, leads you through a series of beautiful places, mates, hatches her eggs, and dies. The author, Laurence Pringle, is qualified to write about the topic of monarch butterflies. He had professors who had studied the topic check the book for accuracy and someone who had studied monarchs give him ideas for the book. Also, the subject is adequately covered. There are illustrations, with labels and names that extend the text. The pictures really help you to understand what the author is talking about. This book has illustrations that appear throughout to give you an idea of what things look like and hold your attention. Moreover,the language is colorful; Pringle decribes well the beautiful nature scenes in which Danaus is exploring. The book has an index so that it is helpful and easy to use. I would definitely recommend this book for children. What a wonderful way to learn!

This beautifully illustrated book takes one on a journey into the world of the monarch butterfly. While it is targeted to those 9 to 12, it works for older children as well. For that child who doesn't really like 'science' but must read a science book the illustrations, story, and side bar illustrations and information, lead the way to discovery.

I read this book to my fifth grade students every year when school starts as an introduction to our year-long monarch butterfly project. Every time I get to the end of the story where the butterfly (Danaus) lays her last eggs I get choked up and have to blink back a tear--so do my students. This book really opened my eyes to the struggle and the hardships a species will endure to ensure survival of that species, not to mention the incredible instinctive traits these butterflies exhibit.

Great book w/ lots of interesting information! My students have found this book to be very useful for their research projects, and I'm glad that it's part of our library collection.

This is a fantastic book for young and old alike. I'm really interested in and indeed astounded by monarchs and what they do yet its been so difficult to find information about what they do, their life cycle past just the metamophosis etc. This book takes you all the way through from the spring migration from mexico to egg laying, development of the egg through caterpillar and into butterfly, migration back to mexico and then the start of the return journey north. An amazing book - I can't recommend it highly enough. Terrific!

This beautifully illustrated book takes one on a journey into the world of the monarch butterfly. While it is targeted to those 9 to 12, it works for older children as well. For that child who doesn't really like 'science' but must read a science book the illustrations, story, and side bar illustrations and information, lead the way to discovery.