Fly, Butterfly, Fly!
Dom Conlon and Anastasia Izlesou
Graffeg

The butterfly addressed in the title is a Cabbage White. As she flits about with the other butterflies in the meadow, she considers herself too plain in comparison with the surrounding flora and her more colourful butterfly companions, the likes of Small Tortoiseshells and Chalk Hill Blues. Consequently it’s a case of ‘Fly, Butterfly, Fly, as she embarks on a journey to butterfly habitats across the world.

First stop is the Amazon rainforest burgeoning with richly hued fauna and flora. However, Butterfly is aware that attractiveness can cause danger due to those on the lookout for something tasty to eat,

so she takes flight again, next stop Mexico. There, along with the humans, the Monarch butterflies are celebrating the Mexican Day of the Dead. There are less of this species now though, as their vital food plants are being killed.

Off goes our Butterfly once more – to the tropical forests of India. There she’s in for a colourful surprise, for out of what appears to be the leaf covering on the ground, rises a host of Dead Leaf butterflies.

Over then to Papua New Guinea’s Mount Lamington volcano, home of the world’s largest butterfly, the Queen Alexander where the hues of the caterpillars make Butterfly think of her home, far away.

Off she goes heading homewards but her journey isn’t yet done; she stops over in the USA, where as in many other parts of the world, butterfly numbers are on the wane. Our common or garden Cabbage White has vital pollination work to do before she finally reaches the place from whence she started; the place where in fact, her colour is exactly right and where, satisfied among her own, she must now lay her eggs in readiness to say, “crawl, Caterpillar, crawl.’

Through Butterfly’s travelog, comprising Dom Conlon’s poetic narrative together with Anastasia Izlesou’s show-stopping illustrations, readers are made aware of the desperate plight of all too many of the world’s precious butterfly species.
An important addition to the Wild Wanderers series and let’s hope, a wake-up call to us all to do whatever we can to stop further decline in butterfly numbers wherever we are.