Disclosure: I was sent a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Over the years we have loved learning about butterflies and especially monarchs. We grow milkweed to help keep monarchs around. Today I get to share with you a wonderful new picture book about the long journey they take every autumn. The book is Home Is Calling: The Journey of the Monarch Butterfly by Katherine Pryor and illustrated by Ellie Peterson. It is recommended for ages 4 to 7. At the end of my post is a round-up of butterfly crafts and activities including a section on monarchs! It shares more than 50 ideas!

From the Publisher:

Join the monarchs as they embark on a transcontinental journey home in this moving story about migration.

As the sun dawns in Canada, a flutter of monarch butterflies take flight, ready to begin their months-long journey to their ancestral home in Mexico. The migration will not be easy, but it is necessary for the next generation of monarchs to be born. Brought to life with illustrations as vivid as the monarch’s iconic orange and black hues, this story invites young readers to experience the monarch’s migration from the butterflies’ point of view as they search for food, huddle together through storms, and tirelessly fly south.

Parents and educators alike will find much to love about this poetically written book. The story touches on how climate change and deforestation are impacting monarchs, and kid-friendly back matter provides additional information about the butterflies, including their life cycle, anatomy, and migratory patterns, as well as several simple ways children can help monarch butterflies themselves.

From Me:

To begin I love this book!! It does a wonderful job of explaining the life of the monarch and how long the journey south really is. Even with all the knowledge I have learned about monarchs over the years here at Crafty Moms Share, I found this book informative and did one of the best jobs I have seen for explaining the length as well as the issues that occur during the migration. It is so interesting that it takes four generations to make the same migration north but only one generation for the trip back south.

This book has beautiful artwork, and the details of the monarchs are wonderful. The words are easy for young ones to understand and describe so much of the migration and perhaps how the butterflies feel making it. It includes flying over the green fields where there are no flowers for food and no trees for rest as well as the desert. It even goes into how some of the land in Mexico has been cleared so the trees are not necessarily where they expect them to be.

At the end of the book are pages that include information about monarchs with illustrations labeling body parts, the life cycle of a butterfly, as well as information about milkweed and threats to monarchs and ways to help. Then there is a map of North America and Mexico with migration routes and more information about the migration the butterflies make. This book is perfect for any home, library, or classroom. It shares a story but also teaches and would be wonderful for unit on migration, preparing for the cooler weather or butterflies. I hope you will check it out!