Follow the Butterfly Stream



Author:  Lorenz Boyd

Genre:  Nonfiction

This nonfiction book is about a stream called “the butterfly stream.”  The narrator talks about how the stream looks right after winter and how pure and beautiful the water is.  The narrator explains how the stream flows through the mountains and through the forest and how other little streams feed into it and make it stronger.  The narrator tells the reader to stop and imagine the Cherokee children playing in the water and chasing around yellow-winger tiger swallowtails and says you can almost hear the children yelling “KAMama,” which means butterfly in Cherokee.  There is a description of what a yellow-winged tiger swallowtail butterfly looks like, how it mates, what happens after they mate, and how it lays eggs.  The book gives information on different parts of nature by the stream such as a big boulder by saying that everything has its place and this boulder was from the Ice Age.  Rivers from the ice glaciers carried the boulder down to the stream.  Different plants like to sprout on the boulder because they like high moist soil and require less soil to grow.  Then the book goes back to talk about butterflies and describes how a butterfly is born.  Eggs hatch to caterpillar and from a caterpillar they form a cocoon and after the cocoon the shell cracks and out comes a wet butterfly.  It will dry before it can take flight.  The narrator goes over other insects that live in the butterfly stream, such as dragonflies and damselflies.  The book describes dragon flies rest with their wings spread and damselflies rest with their wings closed.  Some butterflies migrate south for the winter and others have other ways of managing the cold.

I would have the class read this book in class.  After reading, I would have my students talk to a friend about what they learned about the butterfly stream.  I would give them a minute or two.  I would then have my students “talk back” to the book by writing questions down that they have for the author about what they are curious about.  The book covered a lot of information about butterflies but I will lead discussion about other curiosities in conjunctions with a stream and nature.  I would persuade my students to notice how diverse such a small community (the stream) can be.  This book can be read in conjunction with an insect unit in science.