A migrating monarch lights on a tortoise’s back for a brief conversation, resumes her long journey to Mexico, returns to the tortoise’s garden the next Spring, and continues on to a final rest as the eggs she leaves behind hatch and grow to maturity before the tortoise’s eyes. With So’s delicately brushed illustrations capturing both the lacy energy of the butterflies and the ironically named tortoise’s slow, wrinkled dignity, this brief set of encounters will leave readers contemplating the contrast between the long seasonal rhythms of the tortoise’s world and the much quicker—also more eventful—life a monarch knows. Pair it with Sam Swopes’s equally captivating Gotta Go! Gotta Go! (2000) for a thought-provoking alternative to the fluttering hordes of conventional nonfiction on monarchs. (afterword) (Picture book. 6-8)

A kaleidoscope of butterflies swarming across the jacket invites readers into this fictionalized account of one monarch completing her life cycle. On her way from Canada to Mexico, the monarch stops in Wichita Falls, Texas, meeting Hurry the tortoise in his garden. The two briefly discuss their winter plans--his to sleep, hers to continue traveling to Mexico. They meet again in the spring, when she returns to lay her eggs and die. Hurry, however, is privy to the continuing cycle as he watches a caterpillar eat, spin its cocoon, and emerge as a male monarch who will begin the return trip to Canada. An afterword, successfully addressing the target audience, provides an expository discussion of the monarch's migration--including the fact that it's actually the original monarch's "great-great-great-grandchild" that will eventually reach Canada. Ó Flatharta takes a small literary license (while Wichita Falls is home to many box turtles, the Texas Tortoise lives far to the south) but does so within an accessible story that allows young children a glimpse into the monarch's amazing saga. So's watercolor palette explodes with color, emphasizing the orange and black vibrancy of the butterflies, the crisp greens of the Mexican forests, and the burst of spring in Texas.