Review by Booklist Review
Ages 3^-7. "I don't know much, but I know what I know. I gotta go! I gotta go! I gotta go to Mexico!" Through the experience of one tiny creepy-crawly, this small square book dramatizes the astonishing journey of the monarch butterfly, and the powerful instinct that drives it to fly as much as 3,000 miles from the U. S. to Mexico for the winter, then mate there and fly back north to lay its eggs. The small, uncluttered, line-and-watercolor pictures are set in lots of white space. The words are simple and urgent. Even preschoolers will feel the excitement about this most fragile of creatures that can fly so far and prove so strong. The miracle of the transformation is there on the page when the sturdy little insect emerges from the cocoon transformed into a butterfly, "orange and black and splendid," with gorgeous fluttering wings that nearly fill the page. Then there are pages where it flies and flies, and the butterfly is just a speck in the sky above farms and highways, forests and desert ("I am what I am and I know what I know, and make it or not, I gotta go!"). Like Red-Eyed Tree Frog, Booklist's 1999 Top of the List for Nonfiction, this is a story that brings the wonder of the natural world right up close to a preschooler, without condescension or distortion. The rhythmic storytelling bears repeated readings, and many kids will want to go on from here to find out more about this astonishing creature. --Hazel Rochman
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
"I don't know much, but I know what I know. I gotta go! I gotta go! I gotta go to Mexico!" chants a black-and-yellow-striped "creepy-crawly bug" as she proceeds slowly across a meadow. When an ant or grasshopper asks her destination, she restates the imperative and "creepy-crawl[s] away just as fast as she [can] go." All this hurrying wearies her, and after a "long and hard and very strange" nap in a cocoon, she awakens to discover orange-and-black wings on her back. Refreshed, she takes flight and reaches Mexico, where she meets other migrating Monarch butterflies. Swope (The Krazees) suggests the urgency of the caterpillar's mission by treating it as a kind of hard-wired biological destiny; repeated key phrases and the butterfly's simplified life cycle underscore its sense of a natural fate. At the conclusion, the tale comes full circle with the hatching of another creepy-crawly bug. Debut children's book artist Riddle complements the lucid narration with charming ink-and-watercolor miniatures. Her closeups of the metamorphosing heroine give way to aerial views of farm and canyon as the Monarch flies southward; a deft use of white space creates a sense of loneliness for the solo bug, culminating in a graceful dance of butterfly couples in a penultimate spread. The clarity of the storytelling and artwork match the heroine's determination. Ages 3-7. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
PreS-Gr 1-This is the tale of a "creepy-crawly bug" (Monarch caterpillar), who says "I don't know much, but I know what I know. I gotta go! I gotta go! I gotta go to Mexico!" On her long trek, she meets a grasshopper and an ant, takes a "nice long rest" (metamorphosis), and finally reaches the hibernation grove in Mexico. She wakens in spring to "dance" with another creepy-crawly bug before heading north again to lay her eggs-"-the reason for everything." An author's note and the jacket blurb provide some factual fodder for parents and teachers. Small, full-color illustrations accompany the text. They are attractive, but unremarkable. For a supremely better introduction to the miraculous world of butterfly metamorphosis, try Deborah Heiligman's From Caterpillar to Butterfly (HarperCollins, 1996) or Mary Ling's Butterfly (DK, 1992); for Monarchs in particular use Gail Gibbons's Monarch Butterfly (Holiday, 1989); and for the mysteries of migration, April Pulley Sayre's poetic Home at Last: A Song of Migration (Holt, 1998) is a gem.-Patricia Manning, formerly at Eastchester Public Library, NY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
(Preschool) This jaunty, just-about-butterfly-sized book, loosely based on the life cycle of the Monarch butterfly, soars as a prose-poem picture book. ""The creepy-crawly bug held up her head, looked out at the beautiful meadow, and said, 'I don't know much, but I know what I know. I gotta go! I gotta go! I gotta go to Mexico!' And she creepy-crawled away just as fast as she could go."" The rhythm and repetition are infectious, making it nearly impossible to keep from chanting along. There's also true poetry here, as when (the caterpillar having turned into a butterfly and completed her journey to Mexico) the hundreds of butterflies perched on a tree change ""the green to orange,"" and then change ""the blue to orange"" as they mate in the sky. The story is adventurously circular in shape-appropriate to its life-cycle theme-ending the same way it begins: ""And when it was time, out of the egg came a teeny-tiny creepy-crawly bug."" Sue Riddle's pen-and-ink and watercolor illustrations enlarge the book remarkably, set as they are against expanses of white space and often hugging the edges of the paper. (A bird, for instance, perches on a twig that shoots up from the outside edge of the left-hand page, its tail cut off by the edge; the bird is conversing with our butterfly, placed far down in the corner of the right-hand page.) Neither text nor illustrations can be taken literally, as hard science. Strictly speaking, a caterpillar is not actually a bug; a caterpillar is programmed to eat, not to go to Mexico; and no bird in its right mind would get near a poisonous Monarch butterfly. Riddle responds with a matching nonliteralism-as when she sets pairs of airborne butterflies against pure white space rather than blue sky. The book may in fact bend the rules too much for some; others will enjoy the language so much that they will overlook the factual liberties the book takes and happily let themselves go, with the ""creepy-crawly bug,"" to Mexico. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The heroic, 3,000-mile, annual migration of monarch butterflies to the mountains of Mexico is the inspiration for this picture book from Swope. A small caterpillar emerges from her egg driven by the relentless urge: ``I don't know much, but I know what I know. I gotta go! I gotta go! I gotta go to Mexico!'' Despite the fact she doesn't have a clue as to what or where Mexico is, she valiantly sets out on her journey. En route she encounters other bugs who question her decision, yet she perseveres. Swope's descriptions of these travels and the inevitable transformation, after a long snooze, of the caterpillar into a monarch have an accurate, scientific basis yet are couched in child-friendly terms, e.g., the mating ritual is presented as a dance. Riddle makes use of vivid, glowing colors to capture the majesty of this perennial favorite on the curriculum circuit; with the text, the simple, direct art offers a precious glimpse at an amazing journey. (Picture book. 3-7)
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
