Becoming Butterflies - By Anne Rockwell

Becoming Butterflies is a story written by Anne Rockwell and illustrated by Megan Halsey (Walker and Company New York 2002). It is a realistic fictional story about a class that is watching caterpillars become butterflies and then setting them free. The readability lexile is ages 9-12, but this a great story to read to a pre-k to 2nd grade classroom.

A classroom watches the phases that a butterfly goes through to become a butterfly. The students react to the different phases, sometimes thinking it is icky, sometimes worried about what is happening. The teacher often says, "Wait and see." The author describes how to care for the insects during the different phases and the illustrations show us what it should look like. At the end of the story, the butterfly comes and the children are excited. They release the butterflies to be free and show that butterflies go to Mexico in the winter. There is a picture of where Mexico is on a map and the butterflies grouped together in Mexico. The children write a letter to a classroom in Mexico where the butterflies are, and receive a response from the Mexican students.

The illustrations are important to the story because it shows the students what these phases look like. The story is made up of mostly dialogue and the illustrations add a lot to the story.

Mini-lesson:
If a classroom were going to witness this life cycle, this would be a good way to introduce the subject. This book could be brought out and used as the students witnessed the different phases. We could discuss the reaction of the students in the story and see if we agreed with the students. We could see if ours looked like the one in the story.