Monarch and Mourning Cloak

On her web­site, Melis­sa Stew­art shares that the idea for this man­u­script start­ed in 2008. It was revised many times, but it wasn’t com­ing into focus.

“On a warm May day in 2023, I took the thick fold­er full of drafts out of my man­u­script grave­yard — the mid­dle draw­er of a large file cab­i­net in my office — and re-read the lat­est ver­sion, which I’d writ­ten in 2020. I still liked that draft, called Behold the But­ter­flies, and thought maybe what the book need­ed was an addi­tion­al con­cep­tu­al lay­er, and maybe it should tie into the art and design. So I put on my think­ing cap.

“A few days lat­er, I woke up with a burst of insight — maybe my friend Sarah S. Bran­nen was the solu­tion. Sarah and I had cre­at­ed three books togeth­er, and each time, her art uni­fied the text ele­ments and ampli­fied the sense of won­der. Like me, Sarah loves to observe and explore the nat­ur­al world and her art inspires read­ers to launch their own jour­neys of discovery.”

They’ve both man­aged to ampli­fy a sense of wonder.

The front end­pa­pers belong to the monarch. We learn a great deal about their life cycle. The back end­pa­pers show­case the mourn­ing cloak. On these four “pages” we see their dif­fer­ences immediately.

If you have jour­naled or scrap­booked, you’ll find the pre­sen­ta­tion of infor­ma­tion as excit­ing as I do, absorb­ing this and that, study­ing the detailed draw­ings of things so tiny I would nev­er be able to watch them in real life. Back and forth, check­ing details, mak­ing sure I under­stand. I’ve learned a great deal about these very dif­fer­ent butterflies.

Back mat­ter includes sam­ples of the author’s and illustrator’s own nature jour­nals and encour­age­ment to make your own.

I’m inspired. What will I find to pho­to­graph, draw, paste into my jour­nal? Will I tape the poems in so I can keep work­ing on them? Make edits? Be sure to leave room so I can look up the sci­en­tif­ic names. Sketch­ing. It doesn’t need to be per­fect or pre­sentable. It’s for me. Present. Pay­ing attention.

Thanks to Melis­sa and Sarah and Beach Lane Books for this won­drous book. It will be a trea­sured gift for fam­i­ly and friends.