Handle with Care: An Unusual Butterfly Journey

Gr 1-4--Burns focuses first on the life of the life of the blue morpho butterfly at the El Bosque Nuevo butterfly farm in Costa Rica and concludes with its a final destination, the Museum of Science in Boston. Bold statements emphasize the details of the expedition through punchy phrases. "Sturdy and tightly sealed, these ingenious packages are ready to travel." Factual back matter further supports the story. Additional information appears in the section "Insects and Their Life Cycles," which discusses the process of metamorphosis. Crisp, full-page photographs capture each impressive stage of the butterfly's journey. Vocabulary is clearly defined within the text, and the glossary explains scientific terms used within the narrative. At the end, the author notes that she and the photographer visited the Costa Rican greenhouse to capture this amazing process. This fascinating topic, rarely featured for a young audience, offers an accessible, visual delight.--Meg Smith, Cumberland County Public Library, Fayetteville, NC

"An explanation of the life cycle of butterflies gets an intriguing twist in this account of the work of a Costa Rican butterfly farm, where blue morpho butterflies are raised and the pupae eventually shipped to museums for display and observation. Detailed discussion of each stage in the butterfly life cycle—egg, larva, pupa, and adult—is accompanied by wonderfully sharp, close-up photographs that show intricate structural details, including a three-image sequence that illustrates the emergence of an adult blue morpho from its brilliant emerald-green pupa. It's a bit disconcerting, but also fascinating, to see the industrial overlay on a natural process: eggs are laid on cultivated plants within netted greenhouses, caterpillars at the right age are transferred to an isolated section called the puparium when they're ready to transform, and piles of plucked pupae are sorted and laid out for packaging and shipment. Additional information about metamorphosis, a glossary, and further reading are appended." —The Horn Book Magazine