Hurry and the Monarch [Hardcover]

Antoine O Flatharta (Author), Meilo So (Illustrator)

Book Description

Age Level: 5 and up | Grade Level: K and up

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.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Kindergarten-Grade 2-Hurry, a tortoise, exchanges quips with a monarch butterfly as she stops in Wichita Falls, TX, while migrating from Canada to Mexico. The encounter, told in the present tense, frames a simple, fairly straightforward account of the monarch's long journey and life cycle. The stay in Mexico gets brief coverage. The butterfly returns in the spring, lands on Hurry's shell, lays her eggs on nearby milkweed, and flies off for her final rest. The tortoise then watches the transformation of one of the new caterpillars as it grows, forms a chrysalis, and emerges as a new monarch. The writing includes some jocular dialogue but is sometimes awkward in construction. So's shimmering watercolors are quite lovely, melding a bit of humor, broad impressionistic strokes, and fairly realistic sketches of some monarchs and caterpillars. A general map serving as front and back end pages broadly indicates this monarch's journey. Texas and Wichita Falls are the only marked places, though the text also refers to Eagle Pass, the Rio Grande, and the towns of Sweetwater and Stillwater. A final two-page essay for adults adds more details on monarchs.-Margaret Bush, Simmons College, Boston
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* PreS-Gr. 2. In a tale that recalls Leo Leonni's classic interspecies fable Fish Is Fish (1970), a 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 and deposit an egg, which hatches into a caterpillar that metamorphoses under Hurry's watchful eye. Flatharta avoids heavy anthropomorphizing and romanticized views of nature: the migrating monarchs are as likely to stop to rest on a coil of barbed wire as on a picturesque flower, and the reality of insect life spans is gently but unequivocally addressed when the mother monarch's quick stop to rest "becomes forever." Veined with a tracery of inked details, So's subtle watercolors reference both Asian nature-painting traditions and the limited palette of artwork in the early days of color printing. Together with its informative afterword, this is a particularly attractive, affecting introduction to the wonder of species diversity and the elegant continuum of life. Jennifer Mattson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 5 and up
  
• Hardcover: 40 pages
• Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers (June 14, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375830030
• ISBN-13: 978-0375830037
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 0.3 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,367,731 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hurry the tortoise observes the life cycle of the migranting monarch butterfly, December 17, 2005

By 

Lawrance M. Bernabo (The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Hurry and the Monarch (Hardcover)

Each fall the beautiful orange and black monarch butterflies migrate two thousand miles from Canada to Mexico. The facts about this migration are explained by Antoine O Flatharta in the Afterword to "Hurry and the Monarch," where young readers will learn about how each monarch begins life as a tiny egg on the underside of a milkweed leaf. However, it is the monarchs that are born in early autumn that end up making the long journey to Mexico, where they travel from 50 to 125 miles in a single day until they arrive in the fir forests of Mexico in early November and blanket the forest with millions of orange colored wings. Whereas the usual life span of a butterfly is four to six weeks, the monarchs that journey to Mexico usually live up to eight months and sometimes more. Compare this to the life of a land tortoise, which can live up to 100 years or more. That comparison is apt because in "Hurry and the Monarch" one of the beautiful butterflies makes friends with a tortoise named Hurry.

The facts about the migration of the monarchs are certainly interesting, but the story illustrated by the watercolors of Melo So will make a bigger impression on young readers. The story begins when Hurry, who lives in Wichita Falls in the northern part of Texas, finds one October than a monarch butterfly has landed on his back. She is much more interested in him than he is in her, wondering why he does not break out of his shell, grow wings, and fly away (after all, that is what happened to her). Both creatures are affected by the coming cold weather, but while the monarch flys south to warmer lands, the tortoise just sleeps and waits out the winter. Then the monarch joins her comrades and flies south to Mexico. Melo So is able to contrast the orange and black of the monarch butterflies with the green and yellow of the world in which they live their transitory lives. Working with a rather simple palette of colors So creates a series of lovely watercolors bringing Flatharta's story to life.

As you might expect in such a tale, the monarch returns one morning in the spring to Hurry's garden on her way back north to Canada. She lays eggs on a milkweed plant and flies away. There is a poignant end to her journey, but the emphasis in the story is now on the newborn caterpillar that Hurry watches grow and then transform into a new monarch. The ending of the story continues the lyrical narrative spun and older readers will better appreciate how Hurry and the new monarch butterfly part ways at the end. Flatharta has a nice sense of subtlety in telling this story, beginning with the wry irony of the names but more importantly in terms of how he involves the readers in the story by leading them to certain things without necessarily telling them outright. This simple story about the life cycle of the monarch butterfly has a nice sense of depth, which lifts it to a higher level as a children's book.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars great butterfly story, January 20, 2008

By 

Ann C. Hunter (Wichita Falls Texas) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Hurry and the Monarch (Hardcover)

I found this book in the public library when I was picking books to read with a grandchild. I liked it so much I ordered two copies. I live in Wichita Falls, Texas, which is mentioned in the book as a major stopping spot in the monarch migration to Mexico. Not every year but very often there are thousands of butterflies that cling to my mother's house and seem to drip from the trees near the backyard pond. They are amazing.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is a story about the love of life!, January 25, 2008

By 

Paula Reid "lover of children's lit" (Sebastopol, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Hurry and the Monarch (Hardcover)

I picked this book up at the local library as I am keenly interested in the monarch migration story-- who wouldn't be? But this story adds a depth to the tale of animal migration. It's about love, loss and letting go. Absolutely beautiful illustrations along with a simple, yet powerful story which leaves the reader with a sense of inner peace about the natural world. And over all, it lends this feeling of how fortunate we are to be alive and living on this planet we call Earth! I will be purchasing many copies of this book to offer as gifts to my friends and family members of all ages.